to Levinson, emotional realism meant making the internal external. In other words, he wanted to show the extreme highs and lows of adolescence visually, even if those visuals didn’t adhere to a physical realism.

why not give a show that’s not like a realistic portrait of the youth but more like how they portray themselves

most of the time, we’re using primary colors, and I’m relying a lot on the orange-blue color contrast, which is a really basic one… We use that in night scenes, as well as in day scenes.”As the Euphoria cinematographer notes, the orange-blue contrast is a classic use of a complementary color scheme. And it is used in countless films and TV shows. But Rév cranks up the orange-ness and blue-ness of the lights, creating a contrast that goes beyond the reality of a setting.

the lighting is not completely divorced from the physical reality of the situation. The blue is motivated by the moon, the orange by streetlights. But the degree to which he leans into this contrast is what goes beyond reality and into emotional realism.

“Of course, you have party scenes and stuff, [with] basic colors. Sometimes, it’s red; sometimes, it’s blue,” explains the Euphoria cinematographer. “But we try to stick to one defined color, and not be all over the place.”

I would say the camera movement is the glue in the show, that glues it together.

With a few exceptions, the camera seems to float, giving it an ethereal quality matching the show’s mood.“When the camera is moving, it’s always on tracks or on a dolly,” said Levinson. “We do very little handheld camerawork. And probably 70 percent of the show is shot on sets.”These sets are key to the camera movement. Because the sets are built from the ground up, they are often constructed with specific camera maneuvers in mind.

Of course, this level of complexity requires a massive amount of planning, including storyboarding the camera movements.“Marcell and I sat down with Peter Beck, our storyboard artist, and we basically storyboarded the entire episode,” says Levinson. “There were roughly 700 or 800 boards, and then, in conversation with [production director] Michael [Grasley], we built all the sets from those boards.”The shot took a whopping six days to finish, a rarity in television. “Part of the nature of television is that it doesn’t usually allow for a lot of indulgence,” explains Levinson. “On this show, we made the decision in advance not to do a lot of coverage, which is unusual for television. But in deciding to shoot that way, we accepted the fact that we had to really plan the thing out to get it right.”This type of auteur-esque control is what allows Euphoria cinematography to look so striking. It’s a show which has a visual style that few other series have ever matched.

Although it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes all Netflix shows look the same, a few things stand out: The image in general is dark, and the colors are extremely saturated; Especially in scenes at night, there tends to be a lot of colored lighting, making everything look like it’s washed in neon even if the characters are inside; Actors look like the makeup is caked on their faces, and details in their costumes like puckering seams are unusually visible

Much like you can instantly recognize a Syfy channel production by its heavy reliance on greenscreen but not as expensive computer-generated special effects, or a Hallmark movie by it’s bright, fluffy, pastel look, Netflix productions also have recognizable aesthetics. Even if you don’t know what to look for, it’s so distinct that you’ll probably be able to guess whether or not something was created for Netflix just based on a few frames.

Netflix requests some basic technical specifications from all its productions, which include things like what cameras to use, Netflix’s minimum requirements for the resolution of the image, and what percentage of the production can use a non-approved camera.

Connor described the budgets on Netflix projects as being high, but in an illusory way. This is because in the age of streaming, “above the line” talent like big name actors or directors get more of the budget that’s allotted to Netflix projects because they won’t get any backend compensation from the profits of the film or television show.“They're over compensated at the beginning,” Connor said. “That means that all of your above the line talent now costs, on day one that the series drops, 130 percent of what it costs somewhere else. So your overall budget looks much higher, but in fact, what's happened is to try to save all that money, you pull it out of things like design and location.”