DP Judd Overton

Peacock’s Killing It is a comedy about down-on-his-luck single dad Craig (Craig Robinson) and Uber driver Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), who teamed up to win a snake-killing contest so that Craig could use the $20,000 prize to buy a patch of Florida swampland, where he could grow saw palmetto berries and become a health supplement mogul. But every seeming step forward instead pulled our heroes at least four steps backward.

“Craig’s rags-to-riches story continues this season,” explains the show’s DP, Judd Overton. “And we really explore his struggles to be a ‘good person’ while pursuing the great American dream of financial success.”

Overton is an Australian director of photography based in Los Angeles, whose credits also include Young Rock, Ghosts and No Activity, about which we interviewed him a few years back.

He shot both seasons of Killing It, and we recently reached out to him to talk about his workflow.

You worked on both seasons. How has the look/workflow evolved, if at all? How would you describe the look?
I would call the look of Killing It heightened naturalism. I want the show to feel real and relatable so that when our everyday heroes inevitably fall into ridiculous situations, we keep the audience grounded. It’s got a real “that could actually be happening out there somewhere right now” vibe.

One of our showrunners, Luke Del Tredici, loves the look we discovered. We enhanced it for Season 2, with blown-out windows and glowing highlights, the feeling of an oppressive Miami heat forces its way into the dark interiors.

A progression to our style for this season really hit me when I was reading the cold opening of Episode 2. The season introduces new bad guys in the form of the Boones, a hardened swamp family similar to the ones in Ozark and Justified.

What instantly resonated with me was the similarity to the conflicts I remembered from the Westerns I’d grown up watching. I suggested this perspective to director Mo Marable, who loved the idea. We embraced widescreen close-ups and low angles with a lot of negative space to really enhance our use of the wider 2×1 aspect ratio to constrain the friction between our dueling families.

How did you work with the showrunners? What direction were you given?
Dan Goor and Luke are very hands-on and very present, and you can see that every word has been considered in the room. The great thing on-set is that there is still hope — even an expectation — that we will find something better on-set. Each writer is on-set for their episode and will often do alts to sharpen and improve a scene.

We shoot mostly with three cameras for the ensemble scenes, which allows the actors to really play off each other and provide the editors with the right reactions should one of the improv moments really deliver.

What about working with the colorist? What are some notes that you exchanged? Who was the colorist?
I continued my relationship for the second season with colorist Siggy Ferstl at Company 3, who was amazing at blending all our independent storylines and wonderful locations into one cohesive world. We graded in Resolve using a K1S1 LUT to balance out the multiple camera formats. Then we referenced 3D LUT Cubes from on-set DIT Paul Maletich as a leaping-off point for the final color.

What did you end up shooting on and why? 
We shot a range of cameras and formats all expertly managed by first AC Blair Rogers. Cameras included three ARRI Alexa LF Minis and 4K, 6K and 12K Ursa OLPF Blackmagic cameras.

In front of the camera, we used Gecko Glass Vintage 66 lenses and a combination of Cinema Modified Canon K35s and FDs. I had tested these through Keslow Camera for the first season and loved the combination of the full-frame LF Mini with vintage glass. It gives a contemporary feeling in-camera but a flattering softness to skin tones, which is important, especially when shooting three-camera coverage on big outdoor sequences. Also, there was some beautiful soft flaring when needed. We also carried Premista zooms, which I used occasionally by adding Glimmerglass diffusion to reduce the contrast and better match the Prime lenses.

Can you talk about using heightened naturalism as a tool to find comedy in a bleak everyday life?
The approach with Killing It has always been to keep it real, which means not forcing the comedy with super-wide lenses, not pushing the saturation up because it’s a comedy. If anything, it’s my background in documentary work that influences the naturalistic look.

We choose the best time of day and look for locations that support shooting with three cameras. The heightened monuments are often cold opens, one-shot Steadicam scenes and transitional sequences that show visual counterpoints… the cracks forming in the everyday veneer.

You have used visual elements of other genres to advance the story and emphasize the comedy, like referencing thriller visuals to showcase a character on the run. Tell us about it.
The mood of the show always comes from the page. There is a fine line in the show between maintaining continuity and going on the individual journey with each character in what could often be considered stand-alone episodes.

We always have the swamp, the sideways office trailer and the Boones’ decommissioned strip club as a backdrop for our main characters and their journeys, but so much of the show takes place on the road, traveling from one conflict to the next.

I feel that there are a few simple rules we established in Season 1 to maintain the continuity. Big skies: We wanted the feeling of palm trees and lots of sky above, so we will often shoot our widest frame with that in mind. Heat: The constant, oppressive Miami heat, with sweat dripping and sunlight flaring the lens. Color: We look for and capture all the pastels of Miami but keep the saturation natural, so we are not forcing the “comedy” look on the audience.

Other than that, the cinematography follows the main characters’ journeys through each episode, starting with some incredible cold openers and endings that usually leave them worse off than when they started.

Can you talk lighting?
My longtime gaffer, Kevin Massey, returned for Season 2. A lot of this show is about preparation and working with the elements. Key grip Kyle Pugsley provided big sails and HMIs on Condors to fill the shadows when the sun is out or to create some contrast when the clouds dominate the skyline. While shooting Season 1 in NoLa, we learned to be ready for anything, to pivot at a moment’s notice, and the second season was no different.

All the episodes are 30 minutes long, and we shoot in five days in mostly real, practical locations. When we do get to build a set, we have a lot of fun.

One regular location from this year was the swamp mafia family the Boones’ abandoned strip club. I worked with Kevin and his team to make this feel like it was in a state of disrepair; the staging and lighting were all in place but not working properly, run-down and never maintained. This gave us a dark, seedy vibe inside with some mixed color temperatures, which contrasts the bright lights streaming in from outside.

Showrunner Luke Del Tredici loves the feeling of hot Miami sunlight drilling into these dark underground spaces. We played a lot to get this balance right, and in the end, struck on a really fun splash of color, which still feels imperfect and real.

Another challenge for the lighting department was shooting in high-rise hotel rooms. These are never fun and always a logistical challenge.

We had to shoot three cameras, day for night, in an extremely small hotel room, with a 1-foot-deep balcony. This season, we came up with an extremely effective method using a customized box of Litemats fitted to the sliding windows of our 12th-floor room. Production designer Claire Bennett and her team helped us with some textured sheer curtains, and once we got the light boxes dialed in with the dimmer board operator, we could quickly move anywhere in the room, even right up against the windows, and it felt like soft, natural light glowing up the room.

Did any happy accidents happen on-set?
Always! My approach is to prep and plan thoroughly so that if (when) things go awry on-set, I can stay in the moment and be open to the opportunities that arise rather than trying to force things a way they don’t want to go.

An example from this season was that we ended up shooting through some of the wettest months I’ve ever experienced here in Los Angeles. We used all the tricks: swapping schedule, shooting under giant fabrics and even rain deflectors on the cameras. At one point, I chatted with showrunner Luke Del Tredici, and we agreed to embrace it!

Are there some scenes that stick out as challenging?
It’s always about time… knowing how much time you have and identifying any pitfalls as early as possible.

The big challenge on Killing It Season 2 was the rain and even more, the mud. In the end, we embraced the rain as a dramatic representation of the downward moral spiral our characters are on even as they strive for greater heights. The mud could not be embraced, and some days we just could not get the company up the hill to our swamp location, which ironically looked a lot like a flooded swamp.

On those few days, we were extremely fortunate that our production designer, Claire Bennett, had fabricated the interior of the sideways office onstage, so we had total control — rain or shine. We had a lot of fun matching the interior with a limited amount of bluescreen and fun gags, like windows on the floor, a toilet seat up the wall and a ladder to enter through the ceiling/door.

All the walls and light fixtures could fly out so that we could get cameras in position, but we really tried to shoot as if we were confined in an actual trailer — again, always conscious of “keeping it real” in an unusual environment.

Looking back on the show, would you have done anything different?
I am always learning and hope I always will be. I always try to stay open to other ways of doing things, and if someone has a better way to achieve a shot, even a different way, I will give it a try.

Any tips for young cinematographers?
One of the things I was told early on has always stuck with me — just keep shooting. There is nothing like actually making films, putting scenes together and working with a crew, whether that’s a bunch of friends or hundreds of film professionals. I love it.