Emmy Winning DP Chris Teague on Crafting a New Era of Star Wars in The Acolyte

As the Emmy-winning cinematographer behind Russian Doll and Only Murders in the Building, Chris Teague is no stranger to blending visual style with narrative depth. In Lucasfilm’s The Acolyte, the first live-action Star Wars series set in the High Republic era, Teague was tasked with an even greater challenge: defining the look of an entirely new chapter in the galaxy far, far away. Drawing inspiration from the original Star Wars trilogy, Teague utilized full-frame and anamorphic lenses, practical effects, and ambitious set builds to create a timeless, cinematic aesthetic. From shooting an elaborate forest set that morphed with the story’s emotional beats, to choreographing action sequences with a wuxia-inspired touch, Teague’s vision brings elegance, scale, and authenticity to one of the franchise’s most visually daring installments.

PH: The Acolyte marks the first live-action Star Wars series set in the High Republic era. How did you approach creating a distinct visual language that still felt connected to the Star Wars legacy?

Chris Teague: Since I grew up in the 1980s, I think I am personally most “aesthetically aligned” to the look of the original three Star Wars films. I enjoy the more handmade, practical feel of those films, and I was very excited to make this show in a way that we relied more on fully constructed sets and hand-painted backdrops, and less on bluescreen, volume work, or heavy VFX. There’s no question we used extensive VFX on this show, and to great effect, but the goal was always to create as much as possible in the real world, with the added benefit that we would be providing the VFX department with great references and textures for them to build from. I think the result is that there is a lot our show has in common with the originals.

PH: You chose full frame and anamorphic lenses for a more 'classic' look—how did these choices help evoke the spirit of the original trilogy while grounding this new era?

Chris Teague: The original trilogy was shot in anamorphic, and anamorphic lenses can interestingly shape light because of how they squeeze the image. Horizontal lines can often bend slightly, and the edges of the frame blur in unique and specific ways. The result is something that I associate with a more “cinematic” image, something I (and I think a lot of people) tend to equate with a large-scale movie. Using a large image capture area, such as a full frame sensor or VistaVision, can have the effect of dropping backgrounds more out of focus than on a standard Super 35mm image capture size. This is not a look I would necessarily associate with Star Wars, but I like the idea of having the option of having backgrounds go soft on medium or wider shots, as that quality of a defocused anamorphic lens can have a very special feel to it.

PH: The dream sequence, shot entirely with practical effects like fake snow and reflective backgrounds, is stunning. What was the biggest challenge of capturing that practically, and why was it important to avoid digital effects there?

Chris Teague: Since we were going for a more classic, handmade look to the show, we wanted to use simple, real-world effects for this dream sequence. We employed match cuts, where we track laterally with Osha as she’s running, and then match that camera and actor movement in a new location for a seemingly seamless transition. We also had practical snow begin to fall in Osha and Mae’s bedroom to begin the transition back to the snowy shipwreck on Carlac.

We continued that transition by hanging a white net behind Osha in the bedroom. When the net wasn’t lit, it was invisible, but as we dimmed up a strong light that hit the net, it had the effect of whitening out the background behind her, which created a nice transition. In the final edit, VFX did a digital transition where they morphed a match frame of Osha on snowy Carlac into Osha in the Brendok forest at night. I proposed they do this transition as a simple shot-reverse shot edit into the new location (similar to the end sequence in 2001), but they had other ideas!

PH: The two-episode forest sequence is a technical feat. Can you walk us through your approach to lighting transitions, from sunset to darkness, as Mei’s storyline shifts?

Chris Teague: Based on some testing of color temperatures and lighting gels, we created a “formula” for three different looks that transitioned from late day to sunset. Each look was composed of a color for the hard sunlight and a color temperature for the ambient overhead daylight. The hard sun color shifts from warm amber to blood red (created with Vittorio Storaro Orange gels on tungsten lights), and the ambient overhead “sky” light shifted from about 4400K to 5600K, while also shifting lower in intensity as we progress toward night.

PH: Creating practical fog that hides overhead lighting sounds both creative and complicated. What went into that decision, and how did it impact your lighting strategy?

Chris Teague: Our SFX Department Head, Dave Watkins, had this wild idea to control the temperature of the stage in a way that would allow a heavy fog effect to “hover” near the ceiling for long periods. I was excited about the idea of hiding our stage lighting and stage ceiling with the fog, but also concerned that the fog would sort of blend, soften, or “muddy” our lighting so that we were not able to use directional/hard light, but luckily did not turn out to be the case, since the fog was not as dense as we imagined it would be, but it still served to hide a lot of stuff. I was also concerned that we would see hot spots of our lighting through the fog, which we did on occasion, but in most cases the fog only appeared on camera in the deep background where our lighting was not critical to lighting actors on camera, so we were able to turn lights off or dim them down so they kind of blended into the fog. There were also instances where we knew we’d require some help from VFX to extend the fog or hide lighting, but our VFX Supervisor, Jules Foddy, was happy to have some practical fog references to base their work from, as it made blending the VFX fog into the real world more seamless.

PH: Lightsaber lighting is notoriously tricky. How did you tailor your approach depending on shot type (close-up vs. wide), and how did you ensure different saber colors played well together on camera?

Chris Teague: Having enough light output from the sabers was a concern, and I was surprised to discover that using three strips of LED ribbon versus two (for more output) inside the sabers actually added a significant amount of weight, so we had three strip versions for scenes where the saber needed to throw a lot of light in a space (like when Yord lights up the cave on Carlac at the end of Episode 1) and we had two strip versions when the performers were battling with sabers and needed to be as agile as possible. In terms of color, we knew Leslye wanted Sol to have a deep blue saber, and we thought Yord having a yellow saber would be a nice complement. We didn’t want Yord and Jecki to have the same color saber, so Jecki got a green saber, which was a color that we also thought would work well with her makeup. We tried various mixtures of RGBW color intensities on the LED lighting ribbons inside the sabers to get the right tones and saturation on camera.

PH: You had to match forest scenes shot in Madeira with a constructed set—how did you pull off that illusion of continuity and scale?

Chris Teague: When on location in Madeira, we found something like a gully that we thought would work as an entry point into the forest. It was a path that cut into a small hill, creating natural earthen walls about 15-20 feet high. There were no trees in the gully. Our fantastic art department brought some of the real living greens we used on the stage out into this location, and also added sections of two giant fabricated trees to form a kind of “gateway” into the forest. We used this gateway as a foreground, with the real location behind our actors. As they walk toward the camera and into the trees, we cut to a reverse shot of them on stage, entering the forest. I was nervous about the lighting match between a daylight exterior location and the stage, but I figured we’d be in good shape if we could get the actors into full shade on the location shot before we cut, knowing I could easily recreate that look on stage on the reverse.

PH: For the fight choreography, you drew inspiration from wuxia films. What aspects of that genre’s cinematographic style felt most fitting for The Acolyte’s action sequences?

Chris Teague: What we loved about these Chinese martial arts films was that the camerawork was both minimal and precise. The camera often stays back and holds for long periods of time between cuts, so the audience has the opportunity to really see and appreciate this incredible choreography. When the camera does move, it does so in a way that is closely linked to the performer's movement and typically on one axis - a lateral track, or a short push in. In this way, the camera is mimicking the finely calculated movement of martial artists.

PH: With so many lighting setups and visual challenges, was there a scene or moment that pushed your creativity the most?

Chris Teague: The day-to-night transition in episode 4 was one of the most fun and rewarding creative challenges of my career. Our main characters are racing against the end of day since the planet they are on becomes incredibly dangerous at night, so the color and character of the lighting were key elements in ramping up the tension. It culminates in an actual sunset on camera, when Mae is plunged into darkness at the moment that she reveals that the Wookie Jedi Kelnacca has been killed, and we created this effect by mounting 20k tungsten fresnels on two GF 16 cranes to dramatically drop the sunlight at the proper moment. It was unlike anything I had ever attempted before, and it was such a thrill to see it for the first time in a rehearsal and know it was going to work!

PH: You’ve previously been recognized for your work on half-hour series like Russian Doll and Only Murders. How did your experience in those storytelling formats shape your approach to a genre epic like The Acolyte?

Chris Teague: The various aspects of cinematography are universal and apply to all genres - the use of shadow, highlight, and color, for example, or the use of composition or camera movement to present information to the audience in a specific and intentional way. In Russian Doll we wanted to show a very specific version of New York City, and even though we did not build massive components of that world on a stage as we did on The Acolyte, we still used various colors of light to evoke a kind of chaotic energy, and we chose locations that showed the long history of the city and the way things are haphazardly built upon one another. In Only Murders, we created a very different New York, one that is a bit more refined but noir-ish, where danger can lurk around the corner. I think part of one’s job as a cinematographer is to study closely how images make people feel, and understand what the components of that image are that create that specific feeling, and in doing that, you start to learn how to engineer these effects within your work.