Picture Credits: Netflix
How to Get to Heaven From Belfast follows three lifelong friends in their late 30s: Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher), a popular TV writer; Robyn (Sinead Keenan), a stressed-out mother of three; and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), a carer. Having grown up and moved apart, leading very different lives, they are brought together after learning that Greta, the estranged fourth member of their friendship group, has sadly passed away. Together, they journey together to pay their condolences. But before long, old secrets begin to resurface, and they learn that Greta’s death may not be all what it seems to be.
The series takes visual inspiration from some of the most celebrated works of film and television, from Twin Peaks to E.T. The process of crafting and establishing the visual tone of How to Get to Heaven From Belfast was a collaborative effort, one that acclaimed cinematographer Ashley Barron was right at the forefront of. How did she work to bring such a darkly irreverent story to life? We recently caught up with her to discuss just that. Check out our interview in full below!
When you first read the scripts for How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, what drew you to this project, especially as a cinematographer? What creative opportunities did you see in getting involved?
I got involved because Michael [Lennox], Brian [J. Falconer] and the team of the show reached out, and we met for it. What drew me to it was just how funny it was on the page; it was witty, intelligent, and funny. I grew up in Ireland, so for me it was really interesting to see Irish characters on a page in such a way, which was really great.
I think the thing cinematographically that drew me to it was that the director Michael wanted something different. It wasn’t just quote-unquote comedy shooting — they really wanted the cinematography to be tonal. It was very tonal and needed to reflect the tone and the balance of comedy and suspense. There’s a real depth to what you could do with it, and I was really excited to go on that journey because I hadn’t done that before myself. The challenge of finding that balance between comedy and darkness and surreality, following three hilarious and strong women — I was along for the ride. The director described it as sort of Stranger Things meets Twin Peaks meets Scooby-Doo. For me was very exciting to explore.
Could you tell me a bit more about these references? How did you land on them for the show specifically, and embrace them?
The thing about the references is the feeling that you get. The director once put it as an aspirational horror. We also spoke a little bit about Spielberg with E.T. and stuff. Stranger Things has this kind of childlike wonder; it’s not dark and gloomy, and there is a balance. Because it is a comedy, you want to be able to see faces and have a balance of light and shadow. The other thing that I personally really enjoyed is how we embraced the use of colour. In Stranger Things, it is still a vibrant world, even though it’s dark. And there’s always something off about Twin Peaks — it’s analysing how it created that sort of weird undertone.
We didn’t want to go slapstick and silly, but we also didn’t want to go too dark and gloomy. I think those shows and Spielberg, they hit that balance really well.
Picture Credit: Netflix
Can we expand on that balance, because it’s interesting how you go so dark at times, but it’s also absolutely hilarious, how do you strike that balance?
It’s a process. First of all, it’s performance. From a technical cinematographic perspective, I wanted to be able to create a set environment where the actors could embody their characters within the space and go anywhere they wanted to go. Together with Gaffer Adam Slater, I lit it in a 360 environment with remotely controllable lights. We lit with the grade in mind, knowing we’d be able to create shape and manipulate the colours later, and I think that really allowed the actors to perform.
The actors didn’t play for comedy; it’s in the script. Lisa McGee is a genius with that. It allowed them to fully be themselves in their characters. Beyond that, the faces were very important — you always saw everybody. There’s the odd shot where someone’s dark.
I often say, Mike, the director, brought the comedy, and I brought the darkness. The cinematography has its dark moments, but in the performances and the editing, you can find that balance. We sought a beautiful creepiness through colour – haunting and playful, chose a lot of different colours for light. It’s a multi-layered approach. It’s one of the few shows that I’ve shot where I actually can watch as a punter and really enjoy, not just to see it for the work that we did.
Is there a specific scene or moment that encapsulates that challenge?
I think technically the most challenging scene to shoot was the opening scene. It was a couple of locations that we had to stitch together, we had to light forests at night, we had to build a cabin that we then shot in. Then running with girls with silhouettes and all that kind of stuff. I think, from a technical challenge and lighting challenge, it was big. It was the tonal setting of the series. You’re supposed to lure the audience in. There was a lot of responsibility placed on that scene.
But I think one of the scenes that really encapsulates, for me, the essence of the show, and it’s not a comedic scene, but when Saoirse is in the hotel’s empty disco hall by herself, and Greta appears, and they have this conversation. It was obviously 360 lighting, it was very colourful, there was a lot of darkness around, and the production design team and art department hung fairy lights on the stage, which when combined with the anamorphic lenses, created this really curious bokeh. We shot on these Atlas Orion anamorphic lenses, the way we brought Greta in with B-cam’s off-kilter frame, negative frame. All of it came together to create this beautiful eeriness.
I think the church scene with Dara is another one. That really encapsulated the aspirational horror.
One thing when I was reading about your work on the show was the use of distorted glass as filters, how did that conversation come about, and how did you implement that?
I love abstraction as a means of reflect the psychology of a story.
I thought that there’d be moments where we could use them to be able to create eeriness, or to create something otherworldly at times. Actually, our B camera operator, Connor Rotherham, went to a glass store, and they actually cut us up a few different sizes for us to be able to either put in, or clamp in front of the matte box. B camera is usually the one that kind of has the fun shot, so he would always be on the lookout to see where he could put in front of the lens.
A lot of that you can see in episode one, where the women are having dinner at the restaurant, and there’s all these side shots where the colourful highlights are oblong. For me, I think one of the successful uses of it is the moment where Saoirse and Dara have this conversation with the fire in the background, and we actually put those filters — I don’t even know if you can call them filters — they were just weird distorted glass. We put them just on the side, so it would just cover the flame, and it made the flame really abstract and distorted, underlining the emotional undercurrent of the scene.
How To Get To Heaven From Belfast Season 1. L-R Michelle Fairely as Margo, Matilda Freeman as Maria, Ryan McParland as Feargal & Emmett J. Scanlan as Owen O’Neil. Cr. Netflix 2025
I’m no camera genius and I don’t know the jargon, but I noticed that for a lot of scenes you utilise an almost fisheye lens.
The fisheye effect probably comes from the 21mm lens we had.
It’s interesting that you bring that up, because that was another technique. We wanted to use anamorphic because we tested a couple of different formats, and everyone agreed, from Execs down to the camera team, that it just made it funny, allowing us to compose for our 3 heroes together and play with blocking within the frame.
But again, we didn’t want to use any lenses that were so full of character that they would take away from the actors, or fall so much that they wouldn’t be in focus. With that 21mm lens, it sort of warps the world, which gives you that weird feel, and often very funny.
What specific lighting colours did you use for emotional versus humour? I don’t feel I answered the question, so I have done so more below.
I didn’t really light for comedy. I did light for the actors to be seen. And so nothing’s lost in their performance, their funniness, and their emotion.
I think the humour comes from the interplay between our heroes and the surreality of the world they encounter. Nothing had to be strictly realistic, so being able to play with colours, full stop, contributed to the humour. The choice of colours came down to a mixture of individual tastes, what practicals worked, and what felt tonally appropriate, and how our colourist, Gary Curran, would mix or skew them in the grade, especially in HDR. For example, the graded interplay of Cyan and Orange had a playful energy, the of Blue and Orange like in the church was hauntingly enchanting, green always has the tendency to unsettle, whereas Purple had this eerie quality.
Cr. Christopher Barr/Netflix
I don’t know if you ever read the book, “If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die.” I remember being really struck by the notion that if you see a colour purple, that means something’s gonna happen. You’ll see it in like the hotel sequence, when everyone’s having a shower, there’s like a purple light in the background. As soon as Greta started coming into the story, the beginning had kind of a purple vibe to it.
It’s also the balance of how you use colour – its presence underlined the emotion, like in the disco hall scenes, and sometimes holding back on colour allowed us to hone in on the emotion, like in some scenes I won’t mention for spoilers.
There’s that balance of when you go soft versus when you go hard. The priority with lighting was to create a 360-degree environment. I think often when people hear 360 environment, it means that you just sort of floodlight the space and then figure it out later. We chose pockets of light, we chose remote. We worked with Astera lights, the stereo lights, LiteGear, obviously, ARRI Sky Panels, Nanlux, and all that kind of thing, just to be able to have remote control and be fast about it. I worked extensively with the Production Design team, led by Tom Conroy, to place various practical lights in frame and determine where the colour could come from, such as neon. But I think for me, it was always like, how are the actors lit?
Ashley has plenty of other work lined up. Right now, she’s finishing up on the second season of Rivals, which makes its three-episode premiere in May.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. We thank Ashley Barron for her time.
How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is now streaming on Netflix.
