Outlander season 3, a visual honor, and the show’s three greatest sights
This week, the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) have officially named their nominees for the annual ASC Awards, which are being held on February 17. It’s a fantastic honor to receive one of these nominations; it’s a testament to all of your hard work as a cinematographer, and CarterMatt absolutely thinks that there are some fantastic nominees among the batch this year.
Yet, we’re here to specifically highlight Outlander and Alasdair Walker for his work in “The Battle Joined,” nominated for Episode of a Series for Non-Commercial Television. This was an astounding, incredible episode — especially in the visual sense. Some of the scenes we witnessed for the Battle of Culloden were some of the most spectacular we’ve had a chance to see on the Starz series to date — even without hiring a zillion extras, the cinematography was able to replicate the scale and the atmosphere of the battle, perfectly contrasting the fog with some of the red coats of the fighters. The imagery from this episode was fantastic and at times perfectly emblematic of the horrors of war. It was still Outlander, but it took you somewhere else.
This is why we chose the photo above for this article — the entire sequence felt like a moving version of the image. It was stirring and completely different from any other on TV.
What are some of the other great Outlander season 3 visual moments?
We thought that in honor of the ASC Awards nominations, we’d go back and talk about what we thought were the three greatest visual moments of the entire season. Many of these required hard work and constant effort from cinematographers and could have easily gone wrong in less-adept hands.
“The Battle Joined” – We’ve already spelled that one out above, but it bears repeating. Of course the episode that merited a nomination is going to be one of the ones featured on our list.
“First Wife” – We’re specifically referring here to the end of the episode, and the sequence in which we see Young Ian be captured. The cinematographers did a brilliant job here of giving us a sense of distance between Jamie and Claire’s location and were Young Ian was located out on the island. We were far away, and yet had a rather intimate view as to what was going on. Perspective is sometimes hard to pull off on television and this moment nailed it. There was the emotion of the moment, the sense of helplessness, and the reaction / determination to come.
Related – See another video featuring Caitriona Balfe at the Golden Globes
“Uncharted” – The opening sequence of Claire arriving on her new (and temporary) home was stunning. It established a sense of place and of variance in a way that was really effective. You knew where Claire was, that she was an outsider, and that even though the place was populated to some extent, it was still barren much like the state of her heart without Jamie.
What were your favorite Outlander season 3 visual moments?
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