Dreams, Memories, & Killer Perspectives: Cinematographer Doug Emmett on Shooting “Lucky” and “Furious”

Doug Emmett has had a busy year. After photographing Netflix’s psychological murder mystery His & Hers, starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, he went on to shoot Apple TV’s Bonnie-and-Clyde-style crime story Lucky, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, followed by Hulu’s Furious, a serial killer thriller with Emmy Rossum as Alice, a troubled FBI agent, and Lola Petticrew as Catherine, the calculating murder suspect. The stretch only heightened his creativity.

With Lucky, Emmett shot four (2, 3, 6, 7) of the seven episodes, sharing duties with cinematographer Yaron Orbach (The Deuce, Dope Thief). Locations in Southern California were key to creating its distinct look, often in a sun-soaked, glamorous palette where warm colors and polished compositions give the series an almost seductive quality, while darker tones and cooler temperatures creep in as the story becomes more dangerous. For flashbacks involving the relationship between Taylor-Joy’s character and her boyfriend (Drew Starkey), Emmett took it a step further, pairing a hand-cranked 35mm film camera with vintage lenses to create a surreal texture that contrasts with the main narrative.

For Furious, the East Coast native began on the pilot, splitting the first season (1, 2, 5, 6) with Brian Lannin (High Maintenance, Dave). Here, color and contrast distinguish social class, with mismatched lighting and darker shadows defining lower-income spaces, while warmer hues and softer light sources characterize more affluent environments. The city of New York serves as the backdrop for the plot’s twists and turns in creator Elizabeth Meriwether’s work, loosely inspired by the 1987 film Black Widow. Emmett was also keen on shaping its point of view. “It’s very much Catherine’s and Alice’s stories. So we photograph them essentially the same way so the perspective is that we’re always seeing the world through their eyes,” he tells The Credits. “When you’re shooting their coverage, say, a scene with Catherine, you’d be very much close to Catherine. And in terms of the focal length, we might stay more present with Catherine and a little bit further removed from any other characters.”

Below, Emmett takes us through some of our favorite frames of Lucky and Furious.

Lucky

Season 1, Episode 2: “Make ’em Dance”

Director: Greg Yaitanes
Camera: ARRI Arriflex 2C. Lens:  Zeiss Super Speed Primes, Zeiss B Speeds
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Location: Highway – Santa Clarita, California

Through flashbacks, we see the blossoming relationship between Lucky (Taylor-Joy) and Cary (Drew Starkey). The two are free and innocent; the camera frame is looser and more dynamic. The moment is captured with a hand-cranked 35mm camera, giving a nuanced texture that feels like current events. 

Bennett: What was exciting is that director Greg Yaitanes took over on episodes two and three, and there were these flashbacks that they didn’t have in episode one. So it gave him an opportunity to create a little bit more visual flair to the show. He decided we would use hand-cranked 35mm cameras, so we shot a lot of film as well. We were inspired by Man on Fire and Tony Scott movies that did hand-crank photography.

It was my first time shooting hand-crank, so we shot with both the VENICE and the hand-crank. I could set the exposure on the VENICE to match the film stock, so I didn’t really have to second-guess the approach in terms of the photography.

The style, though, is a bit more ethereal. So I spoke with the special effects team and said that when the car pulls over in the desert, I want a lot of wind and dust. So they have what they call Fuller’s Earth, which they can put in front of the fans and blow dust around. We also set up some lights to mimic the car headlamps. The car’s headlamps were actually pretty bright, but they weren’t at the right angle. So we put these hard point light sources in front of the car lamps and pointed them up at the lenses.

And we rented these old Zeiss lenses that flared quite a bit. So when they went outside of the car and danced around, we did some hand-cranking, did some double exposure, just went crazy with the lens flare, and backlit them without really lighting their faces. I just sort of lit the atmosphere around them and let them be silhouetted against it. Then, every so often, you can get some side-profile shots where their faces are more lit. I think the more evocative stuff is in the silhouettes.

Lucky

Season 1, Episode 7: “All Good Things”

Director: Jonathan van Tulleken
Camera: Sony CineAlta VENICE 2. Lens:  Panavision T Series Anamorphic, Anamorphic Zoom
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Location: Rock Café – Malibu, California

Lucky and her father John (Timothy Olyphant) share a roadside meal while having a seemingly inconsequential conversation about dreams. The heart-to-heart leads Lucky to realize her father might have an ulterior motive. The scene is framed with over-the-shoulders, profiles, and close-ups, their faces never sharing the same frame, foreshadowing the possible betrayal.

Emmett: We had multiple cameras that day. One was a two-shot on a dolly track with a really long zoom lens; the other was their singles. We would do multiple sizes of his side, then turn around for her close-ups.  We lit this with a really big backlight farther away, with a little bluish glow across the background. Then we added [Astera] Titan LED tubes everywhere to create some bits of color and some contrast. On top of that, there’s a softbox with some slightly cooler light. You can see it on her nose and forehead. But what was really fun was the warm light that’s hitting them. That yellowish light was a practical we had set up quite a ways away. It was bright enough to light their faces and create incredible pings of light and really dynamic flares when the shot rolled through the light. I think it had a bit of a surreal quality to it, which was so lovely.

Furious

Season 1, Episode 1: “The Gorgon”

Director: Brian Kirk
Camera: Sony CineAlta VENICE. Lens: Panavision T Series Anamorphic
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Location: Townhouse – Brooklyn Heights, New York

We discover Catherine (Lola Petticrew) is far from the innocent-looking woman she appears to be—she’s a serial killer who uses poison to control her victims. As they lie dying on the floor, she comforts them. The unsettling intimacy becomes a recurring visual theme; an angelic frame hovers overhead.  

Bennett: You look at this, and you go, well, if she wasn’t killing him, then she’d be like making love with this guy. So we thought the juxtaposition of this beautiful, warm, soft, romantic lighting with this horrific act was a fun juxtaposition for the show. We re-blocked this scene. I think he was going to be at the bottom of the stairs, and we realized that it would be more interesting if he’d be sliding down the stairs. As a result, we had to get a mini jib to float over them. And what’s interesting about this lighting is that there are only so many ways to light this scene because of the practical location. If you want soft light, we’d bounce lights into the ceiling and wall to soften it even more. But then we realized we really couldn’t get his close-up because you’re up against the wall. So we rebuilt a section of the stairway on stage to get his coverage and replicated the lighting.

Furious

Season 1, Episode 2: “My Life Had Stood: A Loaded Gun”

Director: Brian Kirk
Camera: Sony CineAlta VENICE. Lens: Panavision G Series Anamorphic
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Location: New York Financial District 

Catherine (Lola Petticrew) has her eyes on a lawyer (Rob Delaney), a man who believes he’s on top of the world…until he isn’t. 

Bennett: This really shows off the characteristics of the G series lenses that we modified with Panavision. They took a standard G series lens and tweaked the edges so the top and bottom of the frame would go a lot softer, so you have a much narrower oval focus. You can see it here, and it definitely works well in vignettes. There was nothing that we really did in terms of post-production effects to create the soft corners and soft falloff of the lenses. The shot is a dolly move, a subtle push-in to show this guy’s world and how powerful he is. The entire conceit of the show is that this woman is going after these men in power, right? She’s trying to unseat them from their throne.”

Furious
Season 1, Episode 2: “My Life Had Stood: A Loaded Gun”

Director: Brian Kirk
Camera: Sony CineAlta VENICE. Lens: Panavision T Series Anamorphic
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Location: Silvercup Studios – New York

We learn that Alice (Emmy Rossum), a detective haunted by the trauma from an abusive relationship, is afraid of taking showers. Her friend and colleague, Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy), helps her through the experience. The scene ends with a wide shot looking in, the coffin-like framing confining the vulnerable moment.  

Bennett: We knew we would want shots like this, so we built the apartment in this railroad style, knowing that we’d want to create some depth. And in this void, it feels to me like these two are so alone in the world. I feel like they’re in their own orbit together. They’re hurtling through space together like broken birds in a way. The whole scene is the two of them sitting side by side. It was a real choice our director, Brian Kirk, made because he’d worked with Emmy and Scoot long enough to know instinctively they could carry this scene. So this was one of those scenes where we’re subtle. The push-in move is so quiet, and it almost feels like a still image. There’s something to be said for just having the confidence in your actors and the script that you don’t need to cut out. I think this was a great example of having the confidence that the actors could do the work.

Furious

Season 1, Episode 5: “Pick a Sticker”

Director: Destiny Ekaragha
Camera: Sony CineAlta VENICE. Lens: Panavision T Series Anamorphic
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Location: Silvercup Studios – New York

Before letting her ex-boyfriend Marshall (Jack Lacy) into her apartment, Alice (Emmy Rossum) looks into the mirror; the broken pieces reflect her troubled past. But what starts as a conversation about their relationship turns into something completely unexpected. Is Alice playing a trick?  

Bennett: We went through multiple iterations of that cracked mirror. We had like three or four different mirrors that had been cracked, and we picked this one because it gives you so many opportunities to see her face in a fragmented sort of way. When the ex-boyfriend shows up, and she stands in front of the mirror, it’s quite a powerful image. 

But then you don’t want to tip the audience off what she’s doing. It’s a fun process of discovery. To see her switch from when she gets on top of him to when she starts pouring the booze on him. You start to discover, at the same time that he discovers, something is amiss. And it’s really not until she calls the neighbor that you really start to put together that this whole thing has been her plan the entire time. It’s such a great payoff and such a great twist within a scene. Which is why I think people love this show…because of all the twists and turns, and how clever these characters are, and how they kind of stay ahead of us in terms of the story. It’s revealed in drips and drabs. That’s the beauty of Liz Meriwether’s scripts. They’re just so tight, well thought out, and carefully crafted. And I think you feel it in the filmmaking.

Lucky is now streaming on Apple TV; Furious is available on Hulu.

Featured image: L-R: LOLA PETTICREW, by (Disney/Sarah Shatz); Emmy Rossum. (Disney/Sarah Shatz); Anya Taylor-Joy and Timothy Olyphant in “Lucky,” now streaming on Apple TV.