The 30-something dating scene is the backdrop in Laid, a new dark rom-com series from Peacock that isn’t shying away from how dead inside it can make someone trying to find love. After a seemingly infinite series of misses, Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) sees life slipping through her fingers until she realizes each of her exes is dying in the exact order she slept with them.
No Film School had a chance to sit down with the series’ lead cinematographer, Judd Overton, who established the show’s tone as a perfectly balanced rom-com and death.
In our conversation, Overton shares insights into his creative process, his creative partnership with director Nahnatchka Khan, his collaboration with the stunts department, and more.
Let’s dive in.
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Editor’s Note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity.
No Film School: How did you get started when you first signed on to the project? How did you establish the tone for the show?
Judd Overton: Director Nahnatchka Khan approached me about the show saying that she wanted it to be a rom-com, to draw on the classics we know and love, When Harry Met Sally, Notting Hill, but this love story really has a really dark twist, all the lovers are dying! Yet despite all the death, the thematic core of our show is love—finding love, like any rom-com worth its salt—but also self-love and acceptance. It’s optimistic and hopeful and genuine and, in addition to the stakes being will they, won’t they, they’re also literal life-and-death. This is truly a love story for our times.
Having worked with Natch on her big network shows, Young Rock and Fresh Off The Boat, as well as slasher comedy Totally Killer I knew that she has a firm understanding of how to balance tone. Laid presents a contemporary romance, with warm and slightly popped visuals, using wider lenses to feel ‘in the room’ with our characters. But instead of perfect framing, gorgeous actors finding their perfect light, we set out to keep Ruby (encapsulated by the incredible Stephanie Hsu) always off center. Like her life, she’s always a little out of balance.
‘Laid’ bts Peacock
NFS: Can you talk about why you opted for two different types of lenses and when you were switching between them?
Overton: Yes, we change things when we shift to Ruby’s romantic perspective, when Ruby finds herself in a moment, the meet-cute or a perceived rom-com beat which is often undermined by a slap of reality. This is when we change to our anamorphic glass, center the frame on Ruby and wait for the magic.
I wanted to draw the audience into Ruby’s mind, to feel the moments as if through her eyes, but I did not want the shift to be so dramatic that it broke the spell, like a filter effect or heavy handed LUT. After trying a number of anamorphics and even de-tuned spherical lenses, foreground glass elements, front vignette donuts and rear diffusion. It was all a distraction; nothing was quite right.
When I put up the Full Frame Cooke lenses, I knew we had it. The center of the image stayed sharp, and the warmth and contrast was comparable to our main package of Zeiss Supreme Primes. The real ‘look’ we fell in love with comes from the drop off and distortion around the edges. We framed for 2:1 and our favorite lens for Ruby’s special shots was the 75mm. We achieved great isolation of Ruby with the anamorphic lens as well as beautiful oval bokeh in the background. I often worked with our On-Set Mary Stuart to place candles, glasses, anything to create a spectral highlight. Gaffer Dave McClung even built a special eye-light rig with a hundred strings of Christmas lights to sparkle in Ruby’s eyes as she waits for a swooning kiss.
NFS: Do you have your favorite scene/sequence in the show?
Overton: The first death we see is at the end of the Pilot episode. Ruby and Jeffrey are traveling home from the funeral. They argue about their one-night stand. Jeffrey stops the Uber, gets out and shows Ruby the middle finger while walking across in front of the hood. As he steps out, he is hit by a speeding car and thrown up, landing bloody head first into the windshield!
This one-shot sequence required a lot of cooperation between all departments. Camera and grips worked together with a 15-foot arm and Scorpio Micro head through the rear of the station wagon. We timed it so B-camera operator Chris Gibbins had time on the shoot day to set up and practice the 200 degrees move while the A-camera was off shooting a free drive sequence on locked down streets nearby. Stunts led by Vancouver co-ord Trevor Jones set up and rehearsed the cowboy switch as actor Jeffrey crosses the A pillar and is replaced by stunt Jeffrey for the jerk out of shot and drop onto the windshield. SFX provided six break away windows, but we got it in four and VFX added a little more blood to the final impact.
‘Laid’via Peacock
NFS: The show has both comedy and death at its center. Can you share more about how you tried to balance the two through cinematography?
Overton: I seem to have a lot of morbid titles with “Killing” and “Death” in my filmography, but it’s always the quality of the scripts and the people involved that draws me to a project. For Laid, we knew we had to ground the dark moments, the deaths. Natch wanted to make sure the audience stayed in the moment. We didn’t pull any punches with the stunts or blood, but all these moments need to live together in the world of the show. Instead of a big look change we chose to view the deaths through Ruby’s eyes. How would she react if these things were really happening? If she had just watched her exe’s head smashing through her windshield? Her reactions are what really sells it and ties it all together. Often to achieve this we would go with a single camera, seeing from Ruby’s perspective.
One great example is the FB to the T sequence. We start with Ruby talking about how sexy and alive her Ex-Boyfriend is, pro baseballer Stu Jackward (played by WWE’s Big E). She checks out his butt on the big screen at AJ’s Bar when out of nowhere, Foul Ball to the Temple.
The commentators go wild as we see in super slow-motion detail the moment of impact as skin ripples and eyeballs bulge with blood. “We have to stop showing that” is overheard as we look even closer than see Ruby’s real-world shock, That’s four dead Exes!
To achieve this sequence, we shot Stu on Blackmagic 12k Cine at 220fps. The skin ripples were created in shot from an air cannon. VFX helped by adding a growing purple bruise and bloody eye as well as adding the CG baseball.
NFS: There is a sequence where we retrace the steps of drunk Brad. Could you tell us more about achieving the visuals of looking through the eyes of someone drunk?
Overton: For Episode 7, director Nahnatchka Khan had something specific in mind. The story is told by Ruby’s employee Brad (Ryan Pinkston) who we learn is a very unreliable narrator. We move between a daytime and realistic tale of “a few quiet drinks,” crash cut with the distorted visual meanderings of a drunken madman. It was a great opportunity to warp the world as we discover Brad’s journey. We went back to the drawing board, reviewing all the lens distortion test from pre-production and adding some more, I think we tested every Funky Wide lens in Canada and they were all just too much, it felt more like a drug haze or prism effect and again, we needed to keep the audience connected.
In the end we loved the effect of the Module-8 detuner which distorted the bokeh of the background highlights while managing to keep Brad sharp in the close foreground. We added it to our widest Prime lens and mounted it to the Steadicam. The whole sequence was captured by leading or following super close to Brad on the distorted wide lens. A-camera operator Andy Capicik would often not know exactly where Brad was going or how he would get there as he spun around and around mimicking a drunken stagger. To add to the madness, we shot this on the summer solstice giving us the shortest night of the year. Art department, grip, and electric teams had their hands full pre-lighting the neighborhood street with festoon lights as well as keeping our lighting condors hidden so we could shoot 360 degrees.
‘Laid’ BTSPeacock
NFS: Do you have any advice for people hoping to get into cinematography?
Overton: I was fortunate to have some great mentors early in my career, it’s always good to have professional mentors of peers and even now I feel like I have people I can call on to ask, how did you do that shot or what tool would you recommend for this.
For me it’s all about practice. Making mistakes is often how you learn, either what not to do, or perhaps a happy accident where you make a visual discovery. Everyone has their own pathway to the film industry, and if it is truly your passion then through a mix of hard work and luck (opportunities) you will make it happen.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
