Jonathan Tropper explained that some “15 years of living in Westchester” helped in part to spark the creation of Your Friends & Neighbors (Apple TV+). “Being adjacent to that world, absorbing the aesthetic of it,” shared Tropper, fueled his desire “to do a show there.”
Set in the fictional, affluent Westmont Village, loosely based on New York’s upscale Westchester County–with episodes entailing lensing in such locales as White Plains, New Rochelle, and Harrison–Your Friends & Neighbors introduces us to Andrew “Coop” Cooper (portrayed by Jon Hamm), a hedge fund manager who’s been fired in disgrace, albeit under circumstances twisted and leveraged by a manipulative boss.
Still grappling with a recent divorce, Coop can only see one viable alternative that will allow him to maintain his lifestyle and continue to provide for his loved ones properly–a life of crime. He resorts to stealing from his neighbors’ homes in Westmont Village. But is it really so criminal to steal from the rich who often don’t miss–or even notice–what’s been pilfered?
Coop, though, gets more than he bargained for–discovering that breaking into these homes unlocks their residents’ deep, dark secrets and affairs.
Your Friends & Neighbors is a delicate balance of drama and comedy with Tropper not only as creator but also serving as showrunner, executive producer, writer and season 1 finale director charged with creating a tone and assembling a team to help bring his vision to fruition. Consider just a couple of those team members–executive producer and director Craig Gillespie, and cinematographer Zack Galler.
Tropper selected Gillespie to direct the first two episodes, noting that the pilot script had “a very specific tone. I was very worried about landing that tone which dances between drama and comedy, satire and farce but staying grounded in the characters. I knew it required a certain kind of directing. It’s hard to put into words but having seen a number of Craig’s films, I felt he had that understanding of how to tow the line between drama and comedy, and how to bring a certain sensibility to it without losing the state of the characters. I felt that way about a number of his movies.”
(Gillespie’s films include I, Tonya; Lars and the Real Girl; Cruella; and Dumb Money; TV shows such as Pam & Tommy and Physical, and TV commercials that have won a DGA Award as well as earning five other nominations from the Guild.)
As for Galler, he served as the cinematographer for the entire season of Your Friends & Neighbors. A number of people had recommended Galler to Tropper. They met and Tropper was impressed with the DP and his work. However, it was key that Gillespie and Galler feel simpatico. Tropper very much wanted the continuity of having one cinematographer over a full season, explaining that the problem generally with a pilot director coming in with his/her/their own cinematographer is that both often move on, leaving a show to have to start over in terms of finding the right DP. Tropper noted that Gillespie was amenable to finding a cinematographer for the duration of the series. Thankfully Gillespie and Galler had a meeting of minds that made this all possible.
Tropper added that Gillespie and Galler fashioned an approach for shooting the pilot that “really helped us to define this kind of a show moving forward.” Tropper observed that Your Friends & Neighbors has a lot of conversations which sometimes take place in a relatively still environment. Steadicam was frequently deployed as the cinematography moves around and between those conversations, helping to add propulsion and movement to what’s transpiring. A certain dynamism and kinetic energy take hold and help bring a visual dimension to the scenes.
For Tropper first and foremost in terms of driving the scenes were the performances of a stellar cast featuring Hamm, Amanda Peet, Olivia Munn, Hoon Lee, Mark Tallman, Lena Hall, Aimee Carrero, Eunice Bae, Isabel Marie Gravitt and Donovan Colan. They and a lineup of directors–which in addition to Tropper and Gillespie includes Stephanie Laing and Greg Yaitanes–help to balance the tone of the show. “If you play it as a straight drama, it really doesn’t work,” observed Tropper. “We use comedy to heighten it a little bit which gives us permission to get outrageous at times without removing the human and emotional stakes of the story.”
Hailing from Apple Studios and produced by Tropper Ink, Your Friends & Neighbors is part of Tropper’s overall deal with Apple TV+ which has renewed the show for a second season. Tropper has a longstanding relationship with Apple TV+, noting that it’s based on “mutual trust” which makes it “easier to bring them things” as the two enjoy a “shorthand” in their communication. Tropper added that he likes Apple TV+’s practice of dropping episodes of Your Friends & Neighbors one at a time. A weekly drop, he said, gives a show the chance to become part of the conversation and zeitgeist as many viewers see it at approximately the same time. Additionally, he continued, another set of viewers can watch multiple or eventually all episodes of a season in one fell swoop after the fact, enabling a series to “live on forever” on a platform.
Regarding what the narrative will look like during the second season of Your Friends & Neighbors, Tropper shared that there’s an inherent challenge after a successful season 1. “You want to bring people back to the same world and to know they will have a similar experience in season 2. At the same time, though, you want to up the ante, raise the stakes, tell another story, take advantage of the opportunity to explore some of these characters more deeply.”
What may bode well for season 2 are lessons learned from the first season. Tropper shared that among the prime takeaways from his season 1 experience is what actors like Hamm, Peet, Munn and Lee bring to the party. Tropper described them as actors who “have a fluidity to them, a way of interpreting scenes that is not always necessarily the way you envision them.” Tropper saw first hand from the actors that there are going to be “discoveries and evolutions of what you’ve written.” At those times, you learn when to go with them, to ride with them–or when to step in and bring things back to original intentions. “On this show particularly, that’s been an interesting takeaway–learning how to kind of treat the actors as an extension of your writing process in a way.”
Adam Bricker, ASC
Adam Bricker, ASC has earned an Emmy and an ASC Award nomination each of the first three seasons of Hacks (HBO Max). He is once again in the awards season conversation for season 4 of the acclaimed show which over the years has won nine Emmy Awards, including in 2024 for Outstanding Comedy Series.
Bricker shared that he feels “so lucky to work on all four seasons, to have shot every episode from the beginning. When I read that very first pilot script, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is such a visual screenplay.’ It was an opportunity for character-driven storytelling, to develop a visual sense for a series that was character-based–to see that through as Deborah Vance [a role which has earned Jean Smart three Lead Actress Emmys] and Ava Daniels [Hannah Einbinder, thrice nominated for this part] have gone on this adventure.”
Bricker’s cinematography has evolved with the series–while certain key constants have remained intact. On the latter front, he observed, “We’ve stayed true to the original concept, designing a look that was modern, set in the present day, while also hearkening back to Vance’s heyday as a stand-up comedian. The look was modern yet had a vintage aesthetic.”
At the same time, Bricker said he’s enjoyed “a ton of creative freedom to have the camera reflect where the character is at–including during times often quite dark and moody, even though this is a half-hour comedy. While the scripts were funny, there’s no pressure to underline comedy with a camera,” thus freeing the lens to be “true to the emotional throughline.”
For season 4, the series relocated, exiting Las Vegas and the comedy road tour of prior seasons to hit the late-night television scene in Los Angeles. “We reset our world creation, making L.A. in late night a character in the show,” said Bricker who has an affinity for bringing a visual beauty to the character-based comedy.
In an installment of SHOOT’s The Road To Emmy Series during season 1 of Hacks, series co-creator, showrunner, exec producer and director Lucia Aniello shed light on what caused her to gravitate to Bricker, marking their first time as collaborators. Aniello shared that she was drawn to his work on three projects–Chef’s Table (for which he earned his first Emmy nomination in 2018), Sorry for Your Loss and in particular, American Vandal. Of the latter, Aniello assessed, “It was very funny and very beautiful,” a combination not typical of a comedy, which intrigued her greatly.
Underscoring Bricker’s visual artistry, expertise in building worlds and doing justice to character-driven fare was his earning in 2024–during his ongoing Hacks tenure–the coveted ASC designation from the American Society of Cinematographers. He has thus far a career total of four Emmy nominations as well as four ASC Award nods–in each case, three for Hacks, the other for Chef’s Table. Beyond television, his body of work also includes feature films which have premiered at SXSW as well as the Tribeca Festival.
Bricker observed that the scale of Hacks has grown over the seasons, generating more responsibilities for a cinematographer from a project management perspective. Helping him in this regard is a team that he’s collaborated with for the full run of the show–and counting, starting with co-creators/showrunners Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky. It might be a bigger show with bigger sets, but that consistency among collaborators has remained steadfast, helping to facilitate and realize the growth of the show. In fact, noted Bricker, much of the crew on Hacks has been together for all four seasons, including several he went to film school with, and some artisans he even knew before film school. The show draws strength from this consistency, communication and continuity.
Danny Cohen, BSC
Danny Cohen, BSC is a lauded cinematographer as reflected on the awards show circuit with recognition ranging from an Emmy nomination for an episode of the John Adams miniseries in 2009 to an Oscar nod for The King’s Speech in 2011, and a pair of ASC Award nods for The King’s Speech that same year and Les Misérables in 2013. He also shot Room, which garnered four Oscar nominations in 2016, winning for leading actress (Brie Larson). Room earned Cohen a Golden Frog nomination at Camerimage. Additionally Cohen is a four-time BSC Award nominee, the most recent coming in 2023 for an episode of Slow Horses (Apple TV+).
Fast forward to today and Slow Horses again has Cohen in the running for awards show consideration. He loves the series premise which is a dramatic–and in some respects, comic–departure from the British spy genre norm. Gary Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb, an off-the-beaten-path, decidedly unpleasant leader of a band of hopeless British spies nicknamed the “Slow Horses” who have messed up their careers in varied ways.
It’s a dream assignment for a cinematographer, observed Cohen, because it’s a spy thriller that’s very much about the characters–a weird mix of action sequences and humanity centering around a bunch of losers. “The writing is so good on the page,” assessed Cohen, making it a rich vein for a cinematographer to tap into.
Cohen embraces the fact that Slow Horses “is not a flashy kind of in-your face” proposition, the protagonists being downtrodden souls housed in “a really crappy building [Slough House],” the antithesis of the high-tech world of U.K. government intelligence/security agency MI5.
Slow Horses made its first Emmy splash last year with nine nominations for its third season, with one win–Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for show creator Will Smith.
Cohen feels that Slow Horses benefits from a modus operandi which pairs one director with one cinematographer for each season. Cohen lensed all of seasons 1, 3 and the current Emmy-eligible 4. Season 1 episodes were directed by James Hawes, season 3 installments by Saul Metzstein, and season 4 entirely by Adam Randall. “That brings real visual continuity to the show, the actors get comfortable,” related Cohen. Having one director there all the way through the season–supported by the same cinematographer–makes a lengthy shooting season more manageable and doable, noted Cohen. “You maintain a look, the whole story has an arc.”
For Cohen, Slow Horses is in ways reminiscent of a film he saw in the mid-1980s, Defense of the Realm, a spy thriller set during a very specific period of British history–shot by the brilliant Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. “It’s a film that always stayed with me–a great script, fantastically shot,” remarked Cohen. “In a way Slow Horses kind of clicks some of those boxes, revisiting that sort of material.”
At press time, Cohen was in the midst of lensing some select commercials, bringing a decidedly different dynamic from his experience on Slow Horses–which has a lengthy shooting schedule with just one director for a season. Commercials by contrast have Cohen working with different directors on a variety of projects, experiencing different approaches and relatively quick turnarounds. Cohen noted that you end up realizing and experiencing different ways of doing things, helping you to “not be set in stone and thinking the only way to do it is this way because that’s the way I’ve always done it.” Commercials help to expand creative horizons and thus can inform TV and feature film work, observed Cohen.
Jacques Jouffret, ASC
American Primeval (Netflix) is an immersive, intense miniseries which takes us back to the American West in 1857–specifically to Utah where a conflict is escalating between the Mormons, led by Brigham Young, and the Shoshone tribe over vast areas of land full of unpredictable wildlife and outlaws. Thrust into this rugged landscape, marked by beauty, brutality and a harsh climate, are Sara (Betty Gilpin) and her young son who must traverse this treacherous territory under unrelenting conditions. To help on this seemingly impossible journey, Sara recruits a rather crude recluse (Taylor Kitsch) who has both a knowledge and wisdom about the region and its inhabitants.
The production journey behind these characters’ journey was also challenging, navigated by a team headed by director Peter Berg who brought in Jacques Jouffret, ASC as cinematographer. Berg and Jouffret have a collaborative bond, born years back on the feature Lone Survivor for which Jouffret served as a camera operator. Tobias Schliessler, ASC shot Lone Survivor and brought Jouffret into the fold. Schliessler envisioned Jouffret, whom he worked with before, as an operator potentially on the same wavelength as Berg. That turned out to be the case as Jouffret went on to team with Berg on varied projects including as operator on Deepwater Horizon, and cinematographer on Mile 22, Novocaine and American Primeval.
“Of all the directors I work with, Peter is the closest to my sensibilities,” assessed Jouffret who noted that they like to do “the same kind of filmmaking,” based on realism. “We shoot with lots of truth, always with a very simple, direct approach to the subject matter.”
Jouffret added that he and Berg share a bond that’s simpatico with–and which deeply values–actors. The DP points out that Berg was an actor before settling into the director’s chair. “It’s beautiful to watch him direct the actors,” said Jouffret who as a cinematographer believes that the cast represents the most vital aspect of a project. “The machinery of making a movie is second to the actors’ performance. My job as cinematographer is to figure out how I can give freedom to my director, to my actors–the freedom to find the moments, without being a burden to them.”
The Western genre also greatly appealed to Jouffret. “I had never done one. It’s very rare that a Western comes your way.” And to be able to do it with Berg further heightened Jouffret’s interest. At first Jouffret wasn’t sure his schedule would permit him to take on American Primeval. He was shooting a movie in Europe during what was to be prep time on American Primeval. But the miniseries’ schedule got pushed back enough so he could go directly from the feature assignment to the Western.
As for cinematic references visually, Jouffret shared that Berg cited director Sidney Pollock’s Jeremiah Johnson. That was the first movie mentioned by Berg after reading a script for American Primeval. Jouffret added that he saw a bit of director Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller as another film potentially offering visual guidance.
American Primeval is visceral and at times violent as it chronicles inhumane realities while delving into the human spirit and its characters’ ulterior motives. We are introduced to varied Native tribes, their perspectives and values. This brings a dynamic point of view to the narrative not typical of Westerns. Similarly with Sara as a protagonist and other characters of depth such as Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), a nonverbal Native girl, the POVs of women vitally contribute to a story which covers just about a two-week span yet gives us an understanding of a country’s growing pains and how they reverberate for years, yielding lessons, an empathy and bits of understanding that remain relevant today.
This is the seventh installment of SHOOT’s 16-part weekly The Road To Emmy Series of feature stories that explores the field of Emmy contenders, and then nominees spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, producing, editing, production design, casting, costume design and visual effects. The series will then be followed up by coverage of the Creative Arts Emmy winners and the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony in September.
