Pau Esteve Birba and the photography of 'Los Tigres'

Director of photography Pau Esteve Birba reviews all the keys to 'Los Tigres', a feature film by Alberto Rodríguez that proposes an exciting thriller starring Antonio de la Torre and Bárbara Lennie with the world of industrial diving in the background, which has forced the cinematographic technique to be adapted to the always complex underwater filming.

Pau Esteve Birba belongs to the lineage of CHESS, a cinematography school that year after year throws talent into the state film scene that splashes the credits of the most relevant film and television productions. When he became part of the Catalan institution, he did not know exactly What was the profession of director of photography?. As he himself admits, he liked the “camera and light”, with all that that implied. Step by step, without sponsors and going through positions as a meritorious, focus puller and camera operator, he ended up finding his vocation: "At 24 years old I was focusing on 35 millimeter films, and at 26, second film units. Everything happened very quickly."

As quickly as 2013, after signing the second unit of the interesting 'Buried' by Rodrigo Cortes, the very interesting Cannibal of Manuel Martin Cuenca allowed him to win the prize Goya for Best Photography Direction. At that time, Esteve recognized that “I had no idea about anything" "It was practically my first film and I won a Goya. I thought this was super easy and look at me, twelve years later, obviously, I haven't won any more. “It's not that simple,” he says.

The learning has continued throughout his career in all types of productions. His filmography combines films like Now or never (2015), The author (2017), Time after (2018) o The good boss (2021) with works so relevant to the definition of new generation of series for platforms like To the fish (2018) o Madrid burns (2018), as well as international productions for platforms like Kaos (2024) o The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (2025). Now, it is in full countdown to the premiere of one of the films that will aspire to everything in the imminent awards season: The Tigers, a production of Movistar Plus+ in co-production with Kowalski Films, Feelgood Media, Mazagón Films and the French company The Pact.

The last movie of Alberto Rodriguez (The Minimum Island, The man of a thousand faces, Model 77) gives the viewer a window into the world of industrial diving with a gripping thriller. All of this, full of spectacular scenes photographed by Esteve himself, who has adapted his technique behind the cameras to underwater environments. The director of photography, beyond reviewing his evolution as a professional, reveals all the keys to the feature film.

Between series and cinema

Esteve has been one of those directors of photography who has experienced first-hand transformation of film production and its extension to the television field. As an example, works such as the dark To Fish, whose bill is controversial even today, or a monochrome Madrid burns, which exemplify the creativity and technique put at the service of stories. Without massive audiences to please, a trend recently transformed given the latest decisions of the large platforms, authorship emerged in an unexpected context.

"When I was thinking about a series, a multi-camera format came to mind, with a general and short films. Suddenly, platform series began to appear. They are long films, in a way, which makes them very attractive. It is true that you are more pressed for time, but the approach and ambition are the same", comments Esteve, who recognizes that in international series like the ones he has worked on, the budgetary ambition exceeds that of many state films.

The politics of cinematography

Among these series is Kaos, one of the most ambitious fiction productions filmed in Spain. Canceled with the always arbitrary criteria of the platforms, the series starring Jeff Goldblum had a budget of 50 million euros and was filmed in locations such as Malaga or Seville. been, who was chosen to direct the photography of four of its episodes, I can confirm the great demands of international productions, putting into practice one of their main learnings in the world of cinematography: the work of “logistics” as department head. "In large projects, you manage the pace of the set in collaboration with the assistant director. You can manage a team of 30 people and, in the entire process, there is a logistical and political part that I was unaware of. Before I thought it was very easy, that I put the camera, light it and that's it. And no: there is a whole industry behind it," he explains.

This dynamic extends to their participation in a new season of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, in which he recognizes that sometimes he has to find bridges among all the visions involved in the set: from the showrunner's conceptual approach up to the criteria of the management team. These disparities creative are evident even in the smallest details, as he acknowledges: “When I did the interview with the showrunner, told me that they were looking for a realistic treatment; that they did not like those flashy “full moon, outside night” moons. However, when it came to reviewing the scripts, suddenly we had a sequence that talked about the full moon.”

Faced with this scene, Esteve was forced to mediate between the director and the person in charge of the series, balancing visions of all those involved in this million-dollar production with global reach: “You are not trying to interfere, but rather to be on good terms with both of them (…) You have to be super cautious to ask and coordinate all the visions.”

The Tigers and the underwater world

Among these creative experiences in the world of series, Esteve Birba received the call from Alberto Rodriguez to work with him again after To the fish and photograph The Tigers, a drama set on the coast of Huelva that brings together thriller, drug trafficking and a family plot with social overtones. When defining the tone of the film, the director wanted, as always, to remain close to the reality. To do this, he carried out a very in-depth investigation of the world of commercial divers, which would end up being reflected in the image of the film.

This investigation brought with it hours and hours of archival material: from reference images of this particular world, to videos captured by Antonio de la Torre's double, professional diver. "He gave us all the videos he had. There were a lot. As a result of that we were able to take shocking images that ended up in the film. For example, the divers jumping between two ships at night are elements that we took from his work. They were very powerful images that had a place in the film," Esteve recalls.

The technique of The Tigers

The development of the film of differentiated universes, over and under water, led the management team to choose two cameras: the Sony Venice 2 and the ARRI Alexa 35. The Japanese manufacturer's camera was chosen by a logistics issue: "We had many sequences on the Aitor 1, the support boat in which the divers go. It has 60 centimeter doors, very narrow, and we needed to pass through with total freedom." To be able to successfully conduct these scenes, Esteve discovered that the only option they had was to have a small Ronin attached to the extension system. Sony Rialto, which allows the camera body to be separated from the image sensor unit up to 5.5 meters.

In addition, The Tigers has scenes filmed on a tanker…that “he could appear whenever he wanted.” "It is very difficult to have the budget to block an entire tanker on the days you want. The tanker comes and lets you roll. That's why we had to have a camera available to suddenly jump in and adapt to the circumstances, which made us opt for the Sony," he comments.

Esteve Birba and Rodríguez chose the Apollo of Xelmus to accompany both the Venice and the Alexa 35. The anamorphic It would give the scene a “super attractive” finish to elements such as the set, the characters and “the story itself”, but it brought with it certain limitations in the underwater setting, given the distortions of this medium. However, the construction of the Xelmus lenses perfectly adapted to the conditions of the project: "The problem with anamorphic is that the minimums are always very bad. They never come down from the subway. However, these are anamorphic lenses that have a very short minimum: they were perfect."

light under water

With the Venice 2 capturing the terrain outside the water, the protagonist of the underwater environments, filmed between the coasts of Huelva and the Ciudad de la Luz studios in Alicante, corresponded to the ARRI Alexa 35. Esteve Birba He acknowledges that he had no experience in this field; so much so that, at the time of reading the script, he contacted production to have a specialized person in these types of contexts.

After studying dozens of European films with underwater parts, Esteve Birba discovered that the same camera operator appeared in all of them: Eric Borjeson. In him they found a force of endless knowledge; Not only did he have experience in all types of environments, natural or controlled, but his love for engineering led him to manufacture the necessary casings yourself for all the technical elements involved.

Börjeson, in collaboration with a team of divers from Malta, was responsible for executing Esteve and Rodríguez's creative vision. All of them shared their experience, going so far as to modify the planning of the scenes. And the behavior of camera movements and light underwater brings with it important limitations: “We didn't know that something as silly as a backward shot, a Trackback of an actor, it is quite a birth in water. The cameraman has to be pulled by a diver to be moved. Until they tell you, you don't fall for this kind of thing.”

He light treatment It also brought with it its own challenges. After coordinating with the production designer, Pepe Domínguez del Olmo, the appropriate materials so that the underwater environments reflected underwater continuity with the scenes of the rest of the film, it was time to deal with the scene lighting: “We filmed in a pool in Ciudad de la Luz that was very shallow, and the scenes we worked on were set 40 or 60 meters under water, which meant that the sun's rays could not pass through.” To solve this issue, it was necessary to have plastics in blue and black tones on the surface of the water to limit and transform the light sources that, except for some cuts, always came from external environments: “The A week It had a very hard casing. Then Eric, with a 3D printer, made a white plastic that allowed the light source to be softened. We use it for some close-up fill.”

Even with the spectacular nature of these aquatic scenes, Esteve Birba does not hesitate to claim many other sequences from the film. "The interactions with the drug traffickers are two very well resolved sequences. One is a 360-degree sequence shot and the other is resolved with three very simple zooms. They are always out of the field and you never finish seeing them, which creates very interesting sensations," he comments.

Balancing seas in the room

The Tigers has counted on Noémie Dulau as a colorist, who has finished the film using the software Baselight of Filmlight. In front of her, a great challenge that had worried Esteve since the filming phase: the mixing of waters. "In The Tigers There are many underwater scenes, but these were filmed in outdoor pools, indoor pools and in the open sea, given that we may need the images to be accompanied by the hull of a boat or a monobuoy," explains the director of photography, emphasizing that a job of "balancing the waters in density, texture and color" was necessary.

Nothing that the magic of the room can't solve. The challenge was met with flying colors, with the film being completed in cinema format. Dulau was also responsible for generating a HDR version aimed at digital platforms, but Esteve recognizes that high dynamic range is not his favorite: “Noémie released an HDR version in 4K, but I don't even want to see it. I'm getting sick! Maybe it's because I'm kind of old. After reviewing my films about 50 times in the laboratory, I see them on the day of their premiere on the big screen with DCP. And that's it."

In search of a road movie

Esteve, currently filming a new series of episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, It has planned, but still confidential, projects on the horizon. Who knows if he will be able to use the ARRI Alexa 35, which he admits is his favorite camera for “texture, color and latitude.” Or if you can fully apply those identifying features of his photography, which usually lead to “low lights", given that their challenge "is not to notice that I have been there."

What is clear is his thorn in the side. That project that has not yet been able to materialize. The phones are open: “It may seem silly, but I'm dying to make one road movie. Something small. comes to mind Paris, Texas. A film of that type, small, with two characters, practically. I'd love to".

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez