published by Meet Me At Crafty
Not since Elizabeth Taylor has purple been so expertly deployed.
Watch the opening episode of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, and see if you have the same reaction I did. Namely, people need to stop complaining that all TV looks the same, because this proves otherwise.
Created by Lisa McGee, the series unfolds in a Northern Ireland drenched in lurid, neon Technicolor. For cinematographer Ashley Barron, ASC, that sense of visual disorientation was exactly the point.
“It was an evolutionary riff of trying to bend expectations,” Barron says. “We wanted something that had a neon-soaked film noir feel.”
From the earliest conversations with McGee and director Michael Lennox, the goal was to create a world that subtly destabilizes the audience. The show deals with friendship, trauma, and long-buried mysteries, and Barron’s camera needed to hold competing tones—dark, funny, and occasionally surreal—sometimes simultaneously.
Production designer Tom Conroy became a crucial collaborator in shaping that atmosphere. Together, Barron and Conroy developed a visual language where color itself could suggest emotional undercurrents, adding what Barron calls an “uncanny quality.”
One recurring strategy was to push lighting further than realism would normally allow. Scenes that might traditionally be played in neutral tones instead burst with saturated hues, giving ordinary Northern Irish locations a strange energy. In one sequence set at the Knockdara hotel, Barron literally blacked out windows to fully control the lighting environment, allowing them to create a moody, controlled palette even during daytime shooting.
“It meant we could build this surreal atmosphere rather than relying on whatever the weather was doing outside,” Barron says. Purple became one of the show’s most expressive colors because “purple can feel dreamy, but it can also make people feel like something’s wrong.”
That duality mirrors the series itself. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast moves between dark comedy and creeping dread, and Barron wanted the lighting to carry that tension.
Some of the show’s visual inspiration came from the heightened television landscapes of Twin Peaks and Fargo—series that transform familiar towns into uncanny spaces. “They still feel grounded in the real world,” Barron says. “But there’s always a sense that something strange could happen.”
For Barron, that was the ultimate goal.
“We wanted the audience to feel slightly off balance,” she says. “Like the world looks real—but not quite the way you expect.”
Ashley Barron is a cinematographer whose credits include Rivals, Dangerous Liaisons, and All Creatures Great and Small. Her go-to at craft services? “Probably a Snickers. Terrible, but yeah. There’s something about the nuts and the protein and the chocolate that is just an energy hit.”
