Never Have I Ever returns to Netflix with fans eager for more of the high school, friends and family drama experienced through Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a modern-day first-generation Indian American teenager. The series is inspired by producer-writer Mindy Kaling’s own childhood.
The first season was a global hit for Netflix and producer Universal Television, attracting over 40 million households in the first month after launch in April 2020. Created and executive produced by Kaling with Lang Fisher serving as co-creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer, the sophomore season is executive produced by Universal Television and by 3 Arts Entertainment’s Howard Klein and David Miner.
The runaway success of the show came as a surprise to cinematographer Rhet Bear, who has lensed all 20 episodes spanning both seasons. “When I got the call from director and producer Tristram Shapeero to do the pilot, I read the script and was really excited to do a TV show about an Indian American teenager, particularly one that broke down stereotypes, but I had no idea quite how big a hit it was going to be,” Bear recalls.
Bear’s credits range from music videos with the Foo Fighters “Times Like These” to TV series such as The Sarah Silverman Program, Speechless and The New Negroes to features like The First Time. He says he realized how popular Never Have I Ever was because of the volume of emails and social media messages he received from over the world. “What was fascinating was that up-and-coming cinematographers in India or Sri Lanka were reaching out to me. That’s kind of unusual!”
Bear set the show’s look along with Shapeero for the first episode, and the look that has gone largely unchanged through Season 2 with one important exception.
“To help the audience get into the head of our teenage characters it was particularly important to Tristram to shoot close up and wide as opposed to using longer lenses. We looked at large-format cameras and decided on RED HELIUM sensor because we loved the look of the pictures when paired with 70mm Panavision Panaspeeds.”
He carried the full set of 17-100mm Panaspeeds but primarily relied on the 21, 27, 35 and 40mm.
Bear’s experience with the RED arsenal on cameras includes music videos and Season 3 of The Sarah Silverman Program on RED ONE and the comedy series One Mississippi for Amazon Studios on RED EPIC DRAGONS.
“The HELIUM sensor at 7K combined with the Panaspeeds on a 70mm mount just lent the images a different feel from what we’re used to.”
Netflix greenlit a second season of Never Have I Ever as soon as it saw the show’s global reach, but that meant production started under COVID safety protocols in November 2020.
“We tried to keep the same look and feel of the show for consistency, but Season 2 was totally different in terms of lensing,” Bear explains. “The idea of getting close and wide with the actors was not an option. The crew, including my operators (A Camera Patrick McGinley and Steadicam Brian Hart) had to always maintain at least a distance of 6 feet from the actors. That meant using more traditional longer lenses — like an 11:1 Primo Zoom, a 15-40mm Primo and a set of Primo Primes detuned by Panavision’s Dan Sasaki to match the feel we had on the Panaspeeds on Season 1.”
Bear found backgrounds particularly challenging given the limited number of extras permitted on set for covering scenes at the bustling high school, a cross-country event or on prom night.
Lighting was also a continuation from the first season with gaffer Christian Grosselfinger using a lot of softer bounce light rather than hard sources on the actor’s faces.
“With this show we want to see these kid’s faces. That’s not to say we didn’t do darker scenes – but all these actors look great – there’s no need to hide it!”
The show LUT is based on an original design by Shapeero and Bear for the pilot and carried forward in the grade by colorist Larry Gibbs at Universal. It deliberately removes blues, skewing the blues to cyan.
“We don’t have blue skies and blue jeans come up looking teal,” Bear says. “We use the same look for the entire show apart from the last episode where we wanted to mix in more blue.” That episode, which centers around a high school prom, was directed by executive producer, co-writer, and showrunner Lang Fisher.
“Working with Lang was a great ending to what was a very challenging season,” relates Bear.
Never Have I Ever is now streaming on Netflix worldwide.