Cinematographer Ante Cheng tees up and finishes out the mystery of His & Hers. He shot the captivating first two episodes, as well as the shocking finale. Few saw that ending coming for the murder mystery, which estranged husband and wife, Anna (Tessa Thompson) and Jack (Jon Bernthal) try to crack in Georgia.
Set in the South, the show has hints of suburban gothicness.
Cheng had previously shot in Georgia with Marvel’s Ironheart. In addition to his television work, the cinematographer has worked on acclaimed projects such as Blue Bayou and Panchinko. With His & Hers, he needs to tell more than one story. Perspectives shift throughout the show, requiring different approaches for more than just Anna and Jack.
Recently, Cheng spoke with What’s On Netflix about shooting and revealing the murdery mystery at the dark heart of His & Hers.
Where’d you begin in visualizing His & Hers?
[Creator] William [Oldroyd] is a very visual director, so we would go on to locations and sets, and he and I would stand in for all the characters. With my little camera, we would shoot and previs all the tricky sequences and cut them together. And once we showed it to the team and the producers, everyone loved it because of just how fun and ridiculous it was, but it also was a very straightforward and clear way to show the creative team what our intention was to shoot these things.
What was the little camera you were using on those days, and what were the complicated sequences that you were prepping?
Mainly the murder sequences that are spread throughout the series — little hints and different perspectives. We were in the forest, so it was quite tricky to figure out how to establish the geography because in the forest it looks pretty much the same. We really had to plan it because we had to rig all the lighting and the rain rigs.
We brought in balloons and huge rain rigs and lifts with lights in them and a techno crane on a drivable base. We had to find a path where we could bring all this equipment and figure out how to not destroy all the grass and leave footprints all over the place because that’s a story point, where it’s a crime scene. It shouldn’t have been trampled by a crew of a hundred people. It all started with a little Fujifilm camera.
With the first murder, you got rain, you got blood, fog, and intense lighting. How’d you want to bring those elements together?
I think every single shot at night with fog and rain, we had to pump in fake blood and have it read with lighting. Every single shot took a lot of effort from all the crew and the cast being in the cold rain and trying not to blink when they’re playing dead. Each single shot took a lot of hard work and effort from all the crew.
There are multiple points of view in the show. How’d you want to distinguish between Anna and Jack?
The core, initial idea that I pitched was to use and design spherical and anamorphic lenses to differentiate the two characters, their perspective, because the script and the series intercut between them, and Will really responded to the duality of the concept.
Then we worked with Panavision to design and customize these two sets of lenses that fit Anna and Jack’s characteristics. Tessa and John had been cast, so we could tune them to their skin tones. I really enjoyed its more subtle way of portraying these two different perspectives.
It’s something I think we wanted the audience to feel. It’s all about the emotional response instead of if we had changed the aspect ratio or just used a different color, and that might be too heavy-handed or distracting.
Picture Credit: Netflix
Spherical lenses deliver notoriously clean shots. Visual effects companies love them. The show does have some grit, though, so how’d you achieve it?
We were aggressively detuned to match Jack’s character. We added in quite a bit of aberrations of all sorts, and we could dial it in with the T-stop that we wanted to shoot at. We had quite a bit of zooms, like complex movements, and a lot of thought was put into designing them.
What were some of your early camera tests? What was learned?
I think the early tests were about color palettes and materials. We knew we wanted to bring colors into the series – just the curtains and shirts. We tested a bunch of them for how they react with sunlight. Also, we wanted to set it in the autumn colors, but how do we do that when we’re filming from summer all the way into the winter?
Also, we wanted to mirror the costume designer. She pitched these beautiful monotone, handmade costumes for Anna. To really put that all in front of the camera with the actors, with all the wallpaper colors and paint samples… With Company Three, we designed two different show LUTs that are almost like film stocks for digital cameras. Because of the complexity of the storytelling, we have the present day and also the flashbacks — flashback to the murder scenes, flashback to the teenage years.
It was quite a collaboration across all these departments for the flashbacks. I really liked the color response and the contrast of the cross-processor, so we were able to create a LUT that emulates that film stock and the chemical process, but it is quite a bold visual that the color that you see with your eyes is not how it turns out. So, quite a bit of testing was done in prep to ensure that it’s all cohesive.
So you wanted a sense of duality?
I think the two color responses between the present day and the flashbacks multiplied by the duality of the two lenses representing the two characters, two storylines mixed in with all these misdirections of the storytelling of the whole murder mystery. I think that’s the visual language we came up with, and I think we’re all really proud of the final product.
In Georgia, what does your eye appreciate about the light there?
Well, he actually changed where the whole series is set because the book is not set in Atlanta, but when he knew they were going to film in Georgia, he discovered and visited Dahlonega, this Gold Rush town by the Blue Ridge Mountains, and chose that setting.
We pushed to schedule these few days where we brought the crew up to shoot a lot of these driving pieces, establishing pieces that really, I think, capture the scenery and the vibe and the mood.
His & Hers. Sunita Mani as Priya in Episode #101 of His & Hers. Cr. Eli Joshua Ade/Netflix © 2025
From summer to autumn, you never would’ve guessed that from watching the show. Well done.
We went all the way into winter when all the leaves fell off. We were stressed from day by day seeing the leaves falling off and had to just try to schedule the best way we could. We had to schedule around the leaves out of all the considerations and restrictions. That was a big part, or it wouldn’t really cut together.
When you were shooting the pilot, did you want to plan any visual motifs that would pay off in the finale?
I think what’s really fun, when we shot the first two episodes, the scripts were still being worked on and not released widely to the crew, so every day the crew was asking me, who’s the killer? Everyone was guessing, placing bets. That’s what the mystery is.
Did anyone get it right?
Some people did, and I had to keep a poker face. It was quite fun seeing everyone’s reactions when we all of a sudden filmed a murder scene. We filmed it out of script order, and just the shock on all the crew’s faces.
Without spoiling it, how bold did you want to go with the reveal of the killer?
It was a daunting challenge of revealing, having in the last episode two big twists with the last twist. It’s almost a 20-minute montage. When I read it, I thought it was a high-risk, high-reward situation where Will had the idea that he really wanted to have constant camera movement because we were flowing through different time and space as Anna was reading the letter. We filmed those pieces throughout the six months of filming because of the actors and locations, and to collect those pieces one by one, and once I saw the first cut, I think it came together really well.
So in your mind, was the murder how Anna was interpreting the letter, basically how she was visualizing the crimes?
Yeah, I think it also really — it’s a new perspective. We weren’t just taking the shots from each scene. It was a new perspective that we filmed each of these little flashback moments, sometimes within the scenes that we were shooting, to build up to these emotional payoffs.
