Doin’ It stars Lilly Singh, who plays a 30-year-old virgin who is moonlighting as a high-school substitute teacher and gets in over her head when she’s assigned to teach sex education. The movie has recently hit theaters after previously premiering at SXSW last year.
Jason Oldak, who previously got ASC-nominated for his work on Lessons in Chemistry, worked closely with the director to create unique and bold visual language for Doin’ It, and sat down with us to share more details on the process.
What did you want to achieve in terms of the look of the movie? Can you tell me more about why you chose that camera and lens package?
Doin’ It tells the story of an Indian woman named Maya Singh who’s on a path of self-discovery. She spends the entirety of the film trying to uncover what she’s missed out on as an adult having lived quite a sheltered life in India. Sexually stunted, Maya now finds herself behind the curve on so many adult topics. The biggest one being that she’s still a virgin at 30.
From the beginning of my collaboration with Sara Zandieh, our director, we both knew we wanted to make an elevated comedy that felt larger than the budget at hand and wasn’t flat or overly lit. We were fans of some recent dramatic comedies and kept circling back to the concept of “heightened realism” for the look of our film. The world that we find Maya in is recognizable to us, but very much foreign to her. The goal was to create a visual language where the image wasn’t overly stylized but felt amplified.
We started to pull a bunch of inspiration and references, and kept circling back to the idea of anamorphic lenses. We felt strongly that this choice of lens could stylize and heighten the image just enough to separate ourselves from a linear reality. We tested and landed on the T and G series anamorphics through Panavision Toronto. I loved the aberrations and the bokeh shapes that were happening on the outer edges, as well as the subtle flares that were just enough to create the heightened look we were after. We kept the lighting to motivated sources in order to create a grounded sense of reality. I opted for the Sony Venice 2 because of the many benefits I’ve experienced with the camera when it comes to efficiency on set. It has a dual ISO and an internal ND wheel that is a total game-changer for me on a tight schedule. I’d shot my last few projects with this camera, so I was quite familiar with the system.
There must have been some logistics involved in shooting outside of the school on one location and inside on another, especially since the school used for interiors was closed down. Can you tell us more about marrying the two locations and also navigating how much needs to be renovated inside?
We were always hoping to find a school that could work for both our interior and exterior work. Throughout the film, there are key story points that happen in various locations inside and outside of the school. A significant one being the theatre where we open our story. That was our primary focus when scouting. We discovered a theatre that had the right aesthetic, as well as the classrooms, gym, and hallways, all of which had the bones that could really work for the story. But the school needed quite a bit of TLC. Sara and I had shot-listed extensively so that our production designer, Peter Cosco, and his team knew exactly which hallways and classrooms needed fixing. They strategically (based on what the camera would see) patched up ceilings, painted walls and lockers, and added furniture. Impressively, they created a spring dance from a dilapidated gymnasium as well as all of our India work within that same space.
We had a complex number of scenes that featured the front and back of our school, and our present location was too condemned to work for the exterior of our story. We got a lead on a school that was featured in the movie Mean Girls, which had an excellent front facade. It matched our interior architecture and had a lush athletic field in the back of the school that plays for a handful of scenes. When you have a 24-day shoot, every day is a puzzle in regard to logistics. Our first AD, Daniela Barbosa, was a magician. She figured out a way to shift the schedule to make everything work smoothly so we could marry both worlds and sell them as one.
You shoot in Canada, but the film takes place in the US and India. What was your approach to creating a look for India? Were there any challenges in passing Canada for the US?
Filmmakers are frequently designing and constructing worlds to stand in for others. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a slight redesign of an interior, and sometimes it’s an entire makeover. Our story is set in Ohio, but could really be placed anywhere in the USA. Toronto’s landscape allowed us to sell suburban Americana quite easily and felt very reminiscent of parts of rural America that I’ve visited in the past.
India was a bit more of a challenge. Maya is sent off to India to have her “tendencies” controlled, and when she speaks out against her teacher there, she is forced to stand in the intense Indian summer heat all day as punishment until she breaks. We wanted that oppressive heat and suffocating feeling to carry throughout our storytelling. Many of our referenced images had a tinge of cyan and warmer tones. Working with our on-set DIT, Spencer Gray, and fine-tuning the look in coloring sessions with Tim Stipan at Pictureshop, we applied a cyan and warm tonality to the image, blooming the highlights and using atmosphere for texture throughout. Our lenses remained the same to keep our visual language consistent. For our exterior location, our production designer, Peter, found an older church/ recreation center that would stand in for Maya’s school. The building had some parallel architecture that one would find in India, which was great. This was a good base layer for his team to work off of and help sell the world through our lens. I feel really good with the result on screen.
Let’s talk scenes – was the scene in the black void shot practically or with a green/blue screen, and can you talk a little bit about your approach to it?
When Maya gets knocked out, she is taken back to the moment in her life where everything changed for her. She finds herself back on stage with her younger self and eventually has an epiphany. We loved the void Jordan Peele created in Get Out and started to brainstorm off of that concept.
I wanted this scene to have a shift in a tonal and stylized nature. It feels like we’ve become frozen in time for everyone except young and adult Maya. Because Maya is under the influence of psychedelics and is slowly finding the answer she needs, moving the camera around them felt like a good way to represent her thought process at work. I pitched placing both actors in the middle of our stage with black curtains surrounding three directions, except for the audience. On the back side of our actors, we built PAR can trees that would slowly dim up and down as the lights were on the far side of the lens, creating a strong backlight with fragmented and dreamlike flaring.
Logistically, we had to shoot this scene on a different day than when we had our audience. In hopes of avoiding the “frozen crowd” that wasn’t actually there, we kept the theatre seats dark and added atmosphere to the room. We rigged sky panel lights toward the stage so that the audience stayed obscured from the flaring.
This setup required an immense amount of choreography with our Gaffer, Michael Hall, our dimmer board op, Peter Molnar, our Steadicam Op, Brad Crosbie, and our actors. I will always opt to shoot something in camera versus blue/green screen if the idea at hand can be achieved! Thankfully, we all came together and pulled off what I feel is one of my favorite moments in the film.
Can you share 1-2 more scenes that were particularly challenging or your favorite?
In one of the final acts in the classroom, Maya seems to have finally cracked the code with her students and the quest to understand her own sexual journey as well. Sara and I knew we wanted this moment to arc in approach and style.
We really wanted the camera to be close and center with Maya and mirror her organic movements through her students. We had sparingly used handheld up to this point in our story and felt it could be the right choice to help the audience emotionally connect with Maya and the freedom she has found within herself.
Our illustrious camera operator, Brad, and I walked through a possible path that Lily could take. She would weave through the students’ desks and make a u-turn back toward the front of class. Brad, using his butt dolly to stay closer to the students’ perspective, found a path and a movement that worked best to mirror Maya’s speech and the kids’ reactions (and to avoid seeing things we didn’t want to see, like film gear). We brought in a high-powered projector and kept the classroom lights off so the beam would flare the lens and contain enough ambient strength to project Maya’s message on the board legibly. Once she comes to the end of her speech, Maya jumps up on the desk ,and the projector reflects across her chest, “Sexual Revolution.” The position of the words on her body was a surprisingly happy accident in where everything lined up.
What I love so much about this scene is the many folks that came together, discussed the blocking at hand, and collaborated as a team to make this scene move the story forward in the best way possible. Once the take ended with the words on her chest, I remember looking over at Sara and smiling knowing we had a great moment in the can.
Anything else you want your audience and peers to hear about working on Doin’ It?
I initially came on board of this film because of my relationship with our director and our successful working relationship. I’d never shot a project in Toronto before. As soon as I touched down, I was truly welcomed by an amazing group of filmmakers who supported my thoughts and desires and had a dedication to the artistry and the filmmaking process.
I was also quite excited to work alongside Anthony Bregman and his legendary production company, “Likely Story.” He was an incredible addition to the process, and I learned so much from his experience and his perspective.
I love that this movie isn’t your average sex comedy and that we were able to tell the story from a South East Asian perspective. It’s so much fun to laugh on set, and there were a ton of moments where we couldn’t help but have uncontrollable amounts of laughter and fun.
Filmmaking is a grueling process, so it’s important to have fun while you do it!
Are there other projects you have in a pipeline or releasing soon?
Earlier this year I had the immense pleasure of photographing LOOT season 3 starring Maya Rudolph. The show is so funny and I’m very proud of the work my team and I were able to produce. The season will premiere on Apple + on October 15th, 2025.
