This post was written by Judd Overton.
Craig Robinson’s rags-to-riches story continues this season, and we really explore his struggles to be a “good person” while pursuing the great American Dream of financial success.
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.
Killing It | Official Trailer | Peacock Originalwww.youtube.com
It is a show with a “that could actually be happening out there somewhere right now” vibe. Our showrunner Luke Del Tredeci loves the look we discovered and have enhanced for Season 2, blown-out windows and glowing highlights, the feeling of an oppressive Miami heat forcing its way into the dark interiors.
This season also introduces a new villain in the form of The Boones, a swamp mafia family in the vein of the Snells of Ozark. This new feud led me to think of the classic Western structure.
I suggested this inspiration to set up director Maurice “Mo” Marable, who loved the idea. We continued to push our big sky Miami framing from Season 1 and embraced more wide-angle 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.
‘Killing It’Credit: Peacock
One of our big sequences this season opens with Craig having finally secured his plot of land for his Saw Palmetto Farm, his first big step toward the American Dream. As quickly as it appears, we realize just how tenuous wealth and prosperity can be as his brand new transportable office trailer drops from a construction crane to smash down in front of him.
To accomplish the sequence, we used the 45’ TechnoCrane and Scorpio head to connect the swinging office trailer to our actors. Then, in coverage, we used longer lenses to compress the distance, keeping the actors safe while dropping the trailer from a construction crane and showing the massive impact as Craig’s dreams come metaphorically crashing down along with his office!
Production designer Claire Bennet then fabricated the interior of the sideways office on stage so we had total control, rain or shine.
We had a lot of fun matching the interior with a limited amount of blue screen and fun gags like windows on the floor, a toilet seat up the wall, and a ladder through the ceiling/ door to enter.
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.
‘Killing It’Credit: Peacock
This season was shot in Los Angeles instead of New Orleans which meant we got the opportunity to build a full swamp location at the top of the Universal Studio lot. Our art department did an amazing job recreating the Miami swamps in one of the wettest LA winters I’ve experienced.
The wet weather did keep the set green, but very muddy. In the end, one of the show’s creators Luke Del Tredici suggested that we embraced the weather and used it to echo Craig’s downward spiral from bright sunny beginnings to our stormy finale.
Season 1 was wall-to-wall snakes. I even had an operator pull out due to a fear of animals! There were fewer snakes this season, but the range of fierce creatures had to expand. One of my favorite episodes this season is when our returning bad guy Rodney Lamonca (Tim Heidiker), fights a shark in a swimming pool!
As it turns out, it’s illegal to put a shark in a swimming pool, so we went down the VFX pathway. We had great fun shooting the Predator Pills influencer party with safety divers, a latex shark, and some lighting transitions using Hydraflex S30s to fill the pool with red blood as the Shark starts snacking on Rodney’s legs.
When working with animals, you need to be ready for anything. Shooting high speed and with multiple cameras, we were guaranteed to get the moment we needed, even when the alligator struck out at our neon lights in the strip club set.
With all filmmaking, time is your constant challenge. We have a great number of stunt scenes this season, from falling trailers to group brawls and vehicular mayhem. Stunt coordinator Ingrid Kleinig and SFX Gareth Wingrove always kept us safe, whether dropping a massive trailer or sending an actor flying over a car!
‘Killing It’Credit: Peacock
We shot the second season on three Alex LF Minis and a range of 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 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, some beautiful soft flaring when needed. We also carried Premista Zooms, which I used occasionally by adding Glimmer Glass diffusion to reduce the contrast and better match the Prime Lenses.
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 and then referenced 3D LUT Cubes from my on-set DIT Paul Maletich as a leaping-off point for the final color.
This post was written by Judd Overton.
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