You've Never Been Inside The Bronco

Cinematographers nominated in the limited series/TV movie category went for dogged realism in capturing everything from O.J.’s notorious freeway chase to 1970s streetlights. 

- Carolyn Giardina

HOW DO YOU re-create the unforgettable Bronco chase that preceded O.J. Simpson’s murder trial without it screaming “fake” and taking viewers out of the story?

That was just one of many questions the four Emmy-nominated DPs in the limited series/TV movie category had to answer on the road to their own awards-season turn in front of the camera.

For the car chase that transfixed a nation — and preempted Game 5 of the 1994 NBA Finals — The People v. O.J. Simpson DP Nelson Cragg had to revisit well-documented history. “You had to get it right to make the audience believe it’s happening again, in real time,” he says.

The scene was photographed on the 710 freeway — not the 405 as it was in real life — which dead ends south of Pasadena. “The City of Los Angeles was kind enough to let the production close two miles of the northbound side of the road on Saturdays and Sundays to shoot the scene. We had exit ramps and an overpass — it gave us the necessary space to shoot the sequence,” he adds.