By Iain Blair

The Netflix limited series Beef tells the story of two Los Angeles residents from opposite ends of the economic and social spectrum. Danny (Steven Yeun) is a struggling contractor living in gritty Koreatown and Amy (Ali Wong) is a successful lifestyle guru living in the wealthy suburb of Calabasas. Their lives become inextricably linked after a road-rage incident in a parking lot that quickly escalates into a full-blown feud.

The series earned 13 Emmy nominations across multiple categories, including one for executive producer/director Jake Schreier, whose film credits include Robot & Frank and Paper Towns.

I talked with Schreier about directing the show, how he collaborated closely with “Sonny” Lee Sung Jin, the show’s creator, and DP Larkin Seiple on the look, and his involvement in posting the series.

How did you prep for this show since you directed most of the episodes — 6 out of 10?
It was quite a scramble. Sonny and I’ve been friends for six years, so before I was even involved, we were talking about it and how to accomplish it and how to approach production. At some point we figured out we would have to cross-board the whole thing; it’s not like it’s episode by episode. We just treated it like one long movie and shot across all nine episodes and the final one that Sonny directed.

So there were just a lot of conversations with him and production designer Grace Yun, about getting a sense of perspective and how to work that into the show in the limited time frame you have in television, how to give it a sense of authorship, and how to really ground audiences in Danny and Amy’s perspective.

Once you got going on this, did you work closely with Sonny on a daily basis?
Oh, 100 percent. He was there for the whole shoot except when he got COVID, and then he was there on his iPad, so it was a complete collaboration. It’s Sonny’s show and his vision, and I looked at it more as what can I offer and bring to it? Like different approaches of how you’d want to work your way into a scene, such as the church scene.

There’s a way that the writing seems to dictate an approach, but in conversations with Sonny it became clear that we should take a very different approach. And when your collaborator is also a friend, you can have those conversations and have the time to revise your approach.

Talk about the visual approach to the show, and working with Sonny and Larkin to find the right look.
We went for something cinematic, and we wanted there to be an element of handheld, of being observed. I think what’s tricky about it is there’s a real level of specificity that we had to achieve in terms of the places in LA and the main locations – Calabasas and Koreatown. But there’s also this heightened place that the show goes to, so how do we come up with an approach that would accommodate the reality of where it starts and some of the heightened places that it goes to? That is a very delicate balance to play, and we wanted you to really connect with it on that heightened level.

What about working with Larkin?
He’s also been a friend for a long time, and he’s a brilliant DP. He has such an interesting approach to lighting and such a smart approach to story as well. Just telling this story in general was such an incredible collaboration across the board, and you always want something to become greater than the sum of its parts, and we all felt that was the case here.

Tell us about the shoot. Obviously, most of it was location work, right?
Right. Grace Yun built an incredible set for Amy’s house and one for Danny’s apartment, but the rest was all locations, and we moved around a lot. For instance, we had motels in three different episodes but just for little pieces, and we could only shoot there for one day. So that was one long seven-stage day getting it all. We shot for six days an episode, so it was quite a sprint.

Maybe the craziest day was where we had to shoot the prison scenes in the beginning of Episode 9, and then the prison conversations at the end of Episode 6. Then we used the parking lot for scenes of Danny’s parents at the end of Episode 7, and we moved to a different parking structure to shoot scenes from Episode 8 and the end of Episode 6. So all that was just one day.

TV schedules are like that, and it’s why all the prep and conversations are so important, because once you’re in the middle of it it’s all moving extremely fast. And I’d always shot-list it and storyboard the script entirely in sequence, even if we were running around and shooting it out of order, to make sure those shots all intercut properly in the edit. All that planning had to be done ahead of time, as on the day it’s just a scramble.

Congratulations on your Emmy nomination for episode 9, The Great Fabricator. How did you handle the big car crash sequence?
Thank you. We got lucky with the location because it had all these private roads where we could stage the chase, and it had a hill and we could send the cars off it. It was exciting having all this action stuff to do, but then we just had six days to do it all. So how do you stage it and pull it off so it doesn’t feel compromised and is also effective? It also leaves moments for the emotional moments between Danny and his younger brother Paul. And I think the emotional moments were just as important as the action stuff.

There is a fair amount of VFX work, especially with all the phone scenes. How involved were you in the post process?
Sonny was nice enough to let me stay through all the post. We had incredible editors, including Nat Fuller [Emmy nominated for his work on Beef], who cut Episode 9 and five others, and I really shoot for the editor. There’s a real specific idea in the way we want the order of the shots, and the way we want the story to be told, so it’s very important to be there for the edit.

Sonny and I had a nice trade-off where I’d turn over a cut and he’d work on it while I moved on to another episode. Then I’d come back to it and we would work on it some more, so it did what it needed to do for the story while also preserving some of the film language and grammar we’d done on the day. As for all the VFX, it’s great to have a showrunner like Sonny who is so meticulous about all that. We had various vendors [including Mas FX, Ghost VFX, Banditry and Reactor] and we tried to make it more about removing things than adding things.

Where did you do all the post?
We had offices in Burbank and then we basically went remote because of COVID and a lot of it was happening on PacPostLive, and we were trading cuts back and forth.

Isn’t it unusual for a director to be that involved in all the post?
Yes, as usually on episodic TV I’ll turn in my cut and the showrunner will take over, and this could have gone that way. But we ended up seeing the show in a very similar way, and when you come in without the attitude of trying to protect your cut or shield it, and instead it’s like, how can I help make it better, it’s a far better way of collaborating.

What about the DI? How involved were you?
I was there for some of the sessions which were done at Color Collective with colorists Alex Bickel and Alex Jimenez. But that was really them and Larkin who has such a great sense of lighting, color and texture. I’m so happy with the way it all turned out.

What’s next for you?
Whenever we can get a fair deal, I’ll get back to directing the upcoming Thunderbolts movie for Marvel, which got shut down by the strikes.

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Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.