Operation look and color: Anton Badstuber’s DIT workflow for spy series The Agency (S2) 

The Agency follows CIA agent Martian (Michael Fassbender) as he navigates secret missions, international conflicts, and a life lived undercover. With the story spanning London and locations around the world, that geographic scale is reflected in the production itself.

For Season 2, it meant filming across the UK, Belgium, Morocco, and Kenya, with each location adding its own challenges, from demanding sets to extreme weather conditions. In this interview, we speak to DIT Anton Badstuber, who worked alongside Lead Cinematographer Martin Ruhe, ASC. Together, they carried the established look into the second season, refining and adapting it to the evolving storyline while maintaining visual consistency across multiple units and a diverse camera package, ranging from the ALEXA 35 to iPhones.

So, let’s go behind the scenes and do a little spying on the workflow!

Based in London, Anton mainly works on long-form narrative projects, including high-end TV and features, as this brings him the most satisfaction in his role: „Building those deeper relationships across longer productions lets me make a more meaningful contribution as a DIT“, he explains. 

The Agency offered exactly that kind of opportunity. So when DP Martin Ruhe, ASC  approached him about returning for the second season, Anton was quick to say yes: „He told me we’d be shooting in Kenya and Morocco. I was enthusiastic about the prospect of working on something so consuming.“ 

What Anton didn’t quite anticipate was just how demanding and unpredictable that six-month shoot would become. Looking back, he recalls: „My initial enthusiasm proved not without a few surprises, as I’d discover over the following six months. I should have known, though, that every good spy thriller surprises its characters“, he adds with a laugh.

I should have known, though, that every good spy thriller surprises its characters.

Before diving into the surprising elements, let’s meet a few other “characters” of the production to better understand how the camera department was organized and Anton’s role within it. 

Crew constellation and responsibilities

The production shot from May to October across an ambitious ten-episode order. To keep the shoot moving across locations in the UK and abroad, two units worked simultaneously with three DPs sharing the cinematography duties:

„We had two units, Red and Blue. I was assigned to the Blue unit. As the lead cinematographer, Martin guided the overall look of the show while also shooting his own episodes (3, 4, 9 and 10) across the UK, Morocco and Belgium, as well as every scene set in Kenya. Cinematographers Sebastian Blenkov and Baz Irvine worked primarily with the Red unit, but joined our unit for their episodes shot in Morocco. They also came to visit our sets during the first weeks of shooting to familiarise themselves with Martin’s approach to lighting and his camera work.“

From a DIT perspective, the two units then operated quite independently, as Anton recalls. His counterpart on the Red unit, DIT Szymon Wyrzykowski, had also worked on the first season. So they were familiar with each other’s workflows. Still, staying aligned where necessary remained important: 

„Since cinematographers occasionally moved between units, we’d share notes ahead of time. Every DP has their own way of working, so it helped to have some insight into that before a new DP joined our unit.“ 

[…] There’s a remarkable consistency across the season while, to a trained eye, each DP’s individual signature still comes through.

Overall, Anton sees a successful balance between visual continuity and the individual perspectives of the cinematographers. „After watching all ten episodes as a finished piece, there’s a remarkable consistency across the season while, to a trained eye, each DP’s individual signature still comes through“, he concludes. 

Using Livegrade, Anton’s role sat at the technical end of that equation, ensuring that the creative intent remained consistent across different cameras and setups. To keep his focus on the image, he worked alongside a dedicated data manager:

„My main responsibilities were signal distribution, receiving the live camera feed, exposure control, and colour management“, Anton explains. „My data manager, Will Lambert, handled data backups with Silverstack XT and liaised with our dailies house, Cinelab. Will also supported me with on-set duties to make sure we were always receiving picture; his work rate was impressive, he gave 100% every day for six months, and was a fantastic collaborator to have on the team.“ 

For consistent on-set monitoring, Anton also worked closely with Video Playback Operator Jarvis Coxwell: 

„Our shared philosophy could be summed up as ‘Team Picture‘: DIT delivers the highest quality image from camera, and Video sends the highest quality image to set on the best monitors. That consistency meant directors and cinematographers never had to question which image was the ‚true‘ one – and it meant we worked more efficiently, without duplicating each other’s effort.“ 

So let’s take a closer look at how Anton delivered that highest-quality image across different camera formats and amid changing production environments. 

Camera package and color pipeline

As with many episodic productions, Anton didn’t need to start his workflow design from scratch: „Since this was the second season of the series, we continued the workflow already established the previous year,“ he explains. 

The ARRI ALEXA 35 remained the show’s main camera, with the color workflow built around LogC4. The production also continued to use the Season 1 show LUT, created by then lead cinematographer Jake Ihre, which Anton describes to us: 

„The show LUT reflects the world of The Agency: cold, callous, and mistrustful. The final look emphasises green in the skin tones, less saturated (but not crushed) shadows, a touch more contrast, and a much colder colour temperature. Watching the footage, the palette recalls a classic spy thriller.“

The show LUT reflects the world of The Agency: cold, callous, and mistrustful.

While the established show LUT provided the starting point, new locations introduced in Season 2 called for some additional flexibility:

„Leading up to us leaving for Africa, Martin mentioned he’d like his work in Kenya and Morocco to convey some of the vibrancy and life of these locations, but also demonstrate the punishing heat that awaited us. He trusted me to design a look that stayed true to our show LUT while better depicting those areas.“ 

To further support the story’s ambitions, the entire camera package was expanded. This meant that alongside its main cameras, the production also used the ARRI ALEXA LF (LogC3), DJI Ronin 4D (D-Log), DJI Inspire 3 (D-Log), RED KOMODO (REDCODE / Log3G10 / RWG), and Apple iPhone (Apple Log).  

With so many different formats entering an established pipeline, Anton had to find a way to bring them together: 

„To implement a LogC4-based workflow, I needed to use colour space transforms to convert the non-ALEXA 35 cameras into the right colour space. Once that technical step was done, it was a matter of shot-by-shot grading to match the other camera’s footage to the ALEXA 35. Consistency was the real challenge – every format has different technical foundations, different base ISOs, and different stop distributions, and colour matching became especially tricky whenever we mixed formats within the same scene.“ 

On top of that, the lens package added another variable:

„Martin decided to switch from ARRI Master Anamorphic to ARRI ALFA large-format anamorphic lenses, also introducing spherical zooms this time around. The Alpha series are characterful lenses, developed by deliberately detuning them – those characteristics helped further elevate the look for season two. Mixing anamorphic primes with spherical zooms successfully required careful on-set monitoring and colour matching, since each lens rendered colour slightly differently.“ 

That made prep particularly important, as Anton outlines: „I tested every lens, identifying its individual characteristics and building a custom CDL for each, which gave me a strong starting point once we were on set, ready to load straight into Livegrade.”

Livegrade workflow 

Anton used Livegrade throughout the show as the central tool for the imaging workflow. With multiple camera formats feeding into the same pipeline, presets provided a way to keep the technical foundation consistent while still allowing for rapid changes on set:

„I built presets for each camera format, each including a colour space transform LUT, a CDL node, a saturation node, and the show LUT node. Having a preset ready for each camera meant I could quickly load the base look into my slots, for example, the moment a drone was suddenly needed on set. Despite all challenges, I was able to successfully match all the images with Livegrade, using colour transforms and CDLs“, Anton explains. 

Despite all challenges, I was able to successfully match all the images with Livegrade, using color transforms and CDLs.

For an episodic production, matching wasn’t only about getting cameras to agree in the moment. Reference material also allowed Anton to carry decisions forward between scenes and episodes: 

„Having reference stills from an entire take has proven invaluable for maintaining consistency in daylight exteriors, especially during a long scene. Martin is a cinematographer who likes to operate the main camera in a scene himself. He spends his time on set making the important creative decisions, and he holds his crew to an incredibly high standard while also trusting them. For me, that meant every camera feed always needed to be visible and consistently matching across the scene and between camera models. Stills and video references from Livegrade helped me accurately grade and expose the footage across a scene, and let me refer back to scenes shot earlier in the job. As the DIT, that groundwork lets the cinematographer concentrate on their own work.“

Anton’s expertise is, of course, a key component in the success of the workflow. But just as important are the tools he relies on to put that expertise into practice, as he explains:

„As a DIT I can only be as good as the tools I have. Of course, I need to know how to use them, but without the right tools, I’m powerless. Pomfort’s software is at the heart of that. Livegrade has become so sophisticated that it can carry me through an entire shoot day as my main software. I wouldn’t want to spend a day on set without Livegrade or Silverstack.“ 

As a DIT I can only be as good as the tools I have. […] I wouldn’t want to spend a day on set without Livegrade or Silverstack.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the other pieces of equipment that have been crucial to Anton throughout this production.

Anton’s gear and setup 

The scale and mobility of the production had a significant influence on Anton’s physical setup. He brought three different rigs, each tailored to a specific production scenario and designed to provide the flexibility the shoot demanded.

1. Main DIT Cart 

Anton’s primary setup was built around an Inovativ Apollo 40 and used for the main production workflow. It featured: 

• 2x Flanders DM220 monitors 
• 2x SmallHD Cine 7s for reference 
• 1x AJA Kumo 3232 
• 4x FSI BoxIO units 
• 1x Decimator Design DMON-QUAD MultiViewer 
• 1x Blackmagic DeckLink Quad 2 PCIe card inside
• an OWC Mercury PCIe enclosure 
• and a 4TB SSD 

2. Splinter-unit rig 

The second cart was designed primarily for splinter-unit work in Africa and for integration into the mobile van setup that became known as the „Party Bus“ (more on that below). It proved even more valuable than Anton had anticipated, as more second-unit days were added in Morocco. It featured: 

• 32-inch Proaim cart with a custom aluminium profile monitor mount 
• 1x Flanders XMP310 
• a Blackmagic MicroHub 1616
• two FSI BoxIO units 
• an OWC Pro Dock 
• a Blackmagic Mini Monitor 
• one Odyssey 7Q as a scopes monitor and recorder 

3. Lightweight mobile rig 

When a full cart wasn’t practical, Anton relied on a third, more compact rig. He used this setup in particularly mobile situations, including filming on the ferry from Dover to Calais and at Antwerp train station. The rig included:

• 1x Flanders DM160 monitor 
• 2x Teradek COLRs 
• 1x Teradek 6 RX  

The need for flexibility also extended to the camera-to-video-village transmission system, as Anton outlines: 

„From my very first conversations about this job, I knew the action-heavy demands of the shoot would need a system that was not only robust and flexible but near-faultless. Knowing we wouldn’t have a dedicated RF team, I took it upon myself to implement a system I trusted to carry us through the six months. So, there was really only one option: Demo Broadcast, formerly known Cobham.“ 

Per camera, they used a Doom Nano HEVC TX, a Sapphire RX, and Rogue Wave downconverters to always receive the image back at video village. The system’s architecture was particularly useful for multi-camera work:

„The big advantage of this system is that it isn’t point-to-point. COFDM transmission makes it far more reliable and efficient for multi-camera work. We could often triangulate the shooting area with the downconverters at the start of the setup and hold a solid image until we moved on. Across the entire six months, we didn’t have any major issues, even on our most demanding 7-camera days in Rabat and Marrakech.“ 

That reliability was put to the test in Rabat, where the season’s opening military ambush scene required seven camera feeds to be monitored across a large inhabited area.

„Servicing that location and monitoring all 7 cameras (4x Alexa 35, 1 x DJI Inspire drone, 1x DJI Ronin 4D, 1 x RED Komodo) across a few ‚city blocks‘ tested the capabilities of our equipment. We had to strategically position our RF antennas on rooftops while video village stayed in an alley on the ground close to the action. With no prep time before the shoot, it took a fine balance of positioning our equipment across this vast, inhabited area to successfully receive all camera feeds.“

Speaking of locations, let’s take a closer look at some of the other sets Anton worked on and the surprises they had in store for him.

Shooting across continents 

Anton’s equipment and workflow had to remain consistent even as the physical working environment changed dramatically:

„No shoot day is the same, but my standards and expectations don’t change, and that’s what makes the role of the DIT challenging. A job of this scale demonstrates that well: whether we’re in an air-conditioned studio or up the Atlas Mountain, the DP expects the same dedication from the crew. It’s most rewarding when, despite every obstacle, my team and I manage to match or exceed that standard.“

While the production was still in the UK, the working environment remained relatively controlled, yet technically demanding. At Shinfield Studios in Reading, sets were spread across three sound stages, including one of the production’s most significant: a virtual production set designed to portray the ninth-floor CIA offices, which are narratively located in the US Embassy in Battersea, London.

To sell the illusion, the entire set was surrounded by a continuous LED screen, run as a virtual production stage.

„To sell the illusion, the entire set was surrounded by a continuous LED screen, run as a virtual production stage. When I first saw it, I was sold – the technology was breathtaking“, Anton recalls.  

The virtual production stage was run and operated by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and serviced with a dedicated team, which was necessary for a virtual production stage of this scale. „ILM had a team of around four people working on set, and probably five to ten more nearby in charge of all the technical aspects of the LED wall.“, Anton remembers. 

Ahead of principal photography, ILM had captured footage from a similar perspective to the US Embassy set, across a wide range of weather and lighting conditions. „The set’s windows faced the LED wall, letting us dial in a huge range of weather – the set even had a rain machine to simulate a stereotypically grey, wet London“, Anton recalls. 

To match the perspective for the projected image, the main cameras (ALEXA 35s) were calibrated for several weeks against the LED screen. And it was an ongoing process during the shoot, Anton remembers: „Each time a new lens size was used on one of the Alexa 35s, the screen and camera needed to be recalibrated to each other.“ 

Anton worked closely with the ILM team to achieve color matching between the screens and the cameras: 

„My contribution to that process was to ensure the image from the camera was correctly colour-managed and graded. This mattered because the ILM team based their own work on the camera image. If a colour adjustment such as tint or temperature was needed on the LED wall itself, ILM made those changes. Livegrade helped me seamlessly match the image across our 2-3 cameras, so there were never any discrepancies between the foreground and the LED background.“ 

Livegrade helped me seamlessly match the image across our 2-3 cameras, so there were never any discrepancies between the foreground and the LED background.

The controlled environment of the UK studio work, however, was about to give way to a very different set of production conditions, as Anton stresses: „Little did we know how different the shoot days would be once we swapped London for Kenya and Morocco.“

In the lead-up to going abroad, DP Martin Ruhe flagged that the foreign locations would sometimes require the team to work out of a minibus or follow vehicle: 

„The idea was that video village, as in DIT, sound, and video, would work out of a bus instead of the traditional cluster of e-zup tents, so we could stay agile and move at the pace the schedule demanded.“ 

This was where Anton’s second rig came into its own. The practical reality, however, varied from location to location:

„Each city and country offered a different interpretation of a ‚mini bus‘, often shaped by local resource constraints “, Anton remembers. The concept also took some time to win over the wider production, particularly the ADs: „Given its size, it was initially seen more as an obstacle than an asset for keeping schedule.“

Over time, however, the setup grew on the crew and even became the setting for a core memory:

„In Kenya, we were often caught by sudden, torrential tropical rain close to wrap. On one occasion, while we were filming in a live public market, the bus became a refuge for a handful of us – including the director, the DP, and the 1st AD. Huddled inside together as the rain thundered on the roof, we found out it was our sound recordist’s birthday. An impromptu chorus of ‚Happy Birthday‘ broke out — a small moment of togetherness in the middle of the downpour. That’s how the „party bus“ was born.“ 

The rain wasn’t simply uncomfortable to work through, though. It presented substantial challenges for the production, as Anton explains: 

„This was as much a creative challenge as a physical one. The rain and overcast weather caused unexpected lighting changes on our largest action scenes, and we were often faced with a dilemma: wait out the weather or risk continuity issues by shooting through it.“ 

We were often faced with a dilemma: wait out the weather or risk continuity issues by shooting through it.

If Kenya meant sudden downpours, Morocco brought a very different kind of exposure:

„During our last few weeks in Morocco, we shot in the desert near Marrakech. This was the rare occasion when working out of a bus was the best place to be: it was over 45°C in the scorching sun, with no shade.“

In the desert heat, the air-conditioned, powered bus kept both crew and equipment going. After proving its worth in such different conditions, it had become more than a practical solution. By the end of the shoot, the team had grown rather attached to it:

„Over the course of the job, we went through four different ‚Party Busses.’ By the time we got back to the UK from Africa, the concept had grown in us so much that we took the Party Bus for one last spin around the race track at Longcross Studios.“ 

And what else does Anton take away from the production, besides his newfound love for „party buses“?

„I’m not the first to say this, but what I’ll take away most from the series are the people. Over six months, I quickly bonded with my team and built some genuinely meaningful relationships. They made every shoot day that bit more enjoyable.“ 

Just as the characters in The Agency pay a price for every mission, I think the crew paid a price too.

That sense of connection also shaped how Anton looks back on the production as a whole. For him, what the crew put into the series is closely tied to what ultimately comes through on screen:

„No matter how gruelling or exhausting a job like this can be, I never forget it’s a privilege to work on a production of this caliber. Just as the characters in The Agency pay a price for every mission, I think the crew paid a price too – the job asked more of us with every passing week, right through to the last day of the shoot. That’s part of why the series works on a psychological level; it demands real commitment from an audience willing to sit with that tension. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. What the audience feels was paid for, in part, by what the cast and crew gave up to make it.“

Big thanks to Anton for sharing all these insights with us!