Barry Season 3 Cinematographer Carl Herse Talks About Leaning Into Darkness [Interview]

This season is about consequences. Visually, how did the themes of season 3 influence the aesthetic choices? The darkness is noticeably more present.

I think with the lensing of it, you have to tell the story honestly. I think the show’s always had this, but I wanted to lean in this season to that imperturbable perspective that is largely objective and the camera’s the blind justice. You’re dealing with all these morally complicated characters and you want a way of shooting them that doesn’t pass judgment on them. Also, it just shows you, this is happening. We would try to create sequences, Bill and I, where you’d start with a more objective, fly-on-the-wall perspective, and then over the course of the sequence or the shot, you’re moving in more and more until you’re in a character’s head.

I think in the first episode, there are a couple good moments that occur back to back with Sally, Natalie, and Lindsay in the hallway. They’re talking about Sally’s show and it starts as this objective wide shot with the camera deep down a hallway. By the end of the shot, we’re so tight on Natalie and we realize the scene is about the new relationship between Natalie and Sally and Sally not treating her like the peer that they were in previous seasons. And so, you’ve got this drive into a character where you take something objective and make it subjective. 

The next shot with Sally is similar, where we see her in this giant, vast sound stage and how small she is and that she’s a part of this giant mechanism of a film set. As we move through the sequence, we’re pushing in on her as people are mobbing her and you get this sense of the pressure that she’s feeling, the responsibility that she has and that she is probably going to crack at some point, because it’s just so much. She’s finally getting what she’s always wanted, but the reality is that it’s challenging.

I think in terms of the darkness of the show, it’s about setting yourself up with the design of the sets and the locations, and the great thing about shooting this series with Bill and Alec is that they’re writing it — they’re the showrunners. It’s not a normal TV situation where you have a revolving door of directors coming through. You’ve got two filmmakers, and we’re treating the whole thing like a big feature.

There are times where Bill and I can sit down and say, “Well, what’s this scene about?” And then we can go to the production designer and say, “We want the space set up in a specific way.” There are moments where we can lean into darkness, too. I know the original opening of the season was going to be a day scene and pretty early on, I pitched to Bill that we could do it as a dawn scene and find Barry — I really wanted to show Barry in his depth. I think Bill connected with that concept of starting in a dark, surreal environment and having the sun come up on this new version of Barry and show the audience where he is now.

It’s exciting to work with a filmmaker willing to take on that challenge, especially when they’re acting in the scene. Obviously, people have been waiting for the return of the show and Bill was totally willing to say, “Let’s do it, we’ll shoot the whole thing in an hour.” We went ahead and mapped everything out. We got there the day before and lined everything up with the director’s finder. We put marks in the ground where the camera positions would be.

I went out there several times at three in the morning and watched the sun come up to see where the light hit the trees and at what time. On the day that we shot it, we had our six shots. We left certain cameras in position so that we could return to those setups. There’s a big wide shot of the tree that you see originally before the sun comes up and then the scene takes place and then we cut back to now, the sun has risen as Barry’s walking back to his car. We shot it in chronological order so that you felt it getting brighter as we worked our way through the scene.