written by Jay Kidd, ICG Magazine
Étoile captures the raw elegance of ballet with long takes, handmade rigs, and a crew that moves as one. The real drama? Making it all look easy.
Step into any ballet studio in the world and the first thing you’ll hear is plié – the French word that means “to bend.” The language of ballet, codified in 17th-century France, has always united dancers in a global pursuit of movement, ambition, and, in the case of the new Amazon Prime series Étoile, the occasional bruised ego.
Inspired by documentaries like Frederick Wiseman’s La Danse, Étoile pulls back the curtain on the cutthroat world of professional ballet, where two world-renowned companies attempt a risky transatlantic talent swap between New York and Paris. The whimsical dramedy is the latest high-gloss offering from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel masterminds Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. Lensed by directors of photography M. David Mullen, ASC, and Alex Nepomniaschy, ASC, Étoile pulses with the signature energy that Mullen brought to Mrs. Maisel for five seasons (and that earned him three Emmys): long takes and incredibly fluid camera work to support the Palladinos’ rapid-fire dialogue.
Mullen cites the musicals from the 1940s and ’50s, such as An American in Paris, as inspiration for his 2025 Emmy nomination for Étoile’s pilot. Each of the episodes’ brief dance flashbacks featured “a strong color scheme, so that when you cut to it, you’d have a scene that’s all red, a scene that’s all blue, one that’s green, one that’s yellow,” Mullen recalls. But, he doesn’t think his graphic use of color and light is what gained him the nod. “I wouldn’t have a nomination if there wasn’t dancing in this show because that’s the real highlight,” he continues. In fact, Étoile’s other 2025 Emmy nomination went to Marguerite Derricks for Outstanding Choreography (who took home the award).
Derricks has been in Amy Sherman-Palladino’s orbit for over a decade, since their first collaboration in 2012 on the ballet-themed series Bunheads. They reunited for the Gilmore Girls reboot in 2016, then once more for Mrs. Maisel. As Maisel matured, so did the choreography. Season 3 brought an elaborate and dance-heavy USO extravaganza, while Season 4 delivered a fresh burlesque number in every episode, earning Derricks an Emmy nomination. For Étoile, Derricks was elevated to producer and tasked with casting not one but two elite-level ballet troupes – work she had to begin the very next day after wrapping Maisel. It was, she says, a dream assignment. “I come from a ballet background – that’s where a big bulk of my training is,” Derricks shares. “I didn’t even take any other styles of dance until I was seventeen years old. This show was such an opportunity for me to go back to my roots and fulfill that dream of working with a ballet company.”
In Palladino’s shows, the frame is always alive with motion, zooming and twirling alongside the actors as they talk or move. In Étoile’s world, everything feels like a dance, from the background players to the camera itself. “Amy always finds a way to make something musical, even if it’s not a musical,” Mullen explains. “I think she thinks of life as a musical.” In fact, every movement, not just the dance sequences, is choreographed. For example, Derricks designed the swirling, one-take opening shot of Maisel’s second season. In it, the camera sweeps past window dressings, spins around a store packed with customers, follows a letter down a mail chute, and ends with Midge flying around on a rolling chair, working a telephone switchboard. “If anything moved on Maisel, I was part of it,” Derricks says. “Amy uses me for everything, big and small.”
Her role even shaped casting. Derricks recalls an incident during Maisel where a background performer once struggled with the show’s musicality, slowing down the day. From then on, the Palladinos insisted on casting trained dancers for background roles in scenes that involved complicated camerawork. “Dancers have an understanding of timing and staging that is vital to moving the camera,” Derricks explains.
That seamless melding of image and dance is what makes all Palladino productions unique. According to First AC Anthony Cappello, Sherman-Palladino, a former ballerina, is “obsessed with dance” and “has an affinity for dancing and dancers.” Cappello notes that Palladino’s goal in making Étoile was “to present ballet on a grandiose scale and give the dancers the credit they deserve,” while also acknowledging the art form’s grueling reality.
To achieve Palladino’s vision, the team realized they needed to make their camera feel lighter than air. This proved challenging because, unlike the ALEXA MINIs they used on Maisel, Étoile utilized the ALEXA 35. Weighing 1.4 pounds more than the MINI, Mullen elected to use the ALEXA 35 for the look of the sensor and because the 4.6K resolution gives extra room for shot stabilization. But he was also motivated by a desire for change.
“I’ve been using the same camera for so long,” Mullen admits. “I used the original ALEXA and then the MINIs when they first came out. But it’s still the same sensor, and I’ve been using them with Panavision Primo lenses all that time, too. So, when Étoile started, I wanted to do something slightly different. I wanted to get experience with a new camera, so I pushed to switch to the ALEXA 35.”
To compensate for the added weight, Mullen searched for lighter lenses that would match the look and feel of the show. He eventually settled on Panavision’s VA lenses, noting, “They have a creamy look, a little problem with chromatic aberration, but it wasn’t too bad. They’re very pleasant on the skin tones. They almost have a little built-in low-con effect when you point them into bright windows.” To differentiate between his two international locations, Mullen chose to shoot with Tiffen Black Satin filters for New York and Hollywood Black Magic filters for Paris. “But sometimes I used Tiffen Pearlescent filters, and I also have my collection of nets.”
To create the show’s floaty camera moves, Mullen turned to longtime Local 600 operators Jim McConkey and his brother, Larry. Together, the siblings developed a variety of tools for shooting dance. One rig, nicknamed the “Wonderstick,” integrates a three-axis Mōvi Pro stabilizer and a Steadicam post, where the electronics and batteries can be positioned either at the bottom of the rig or directly on the camera. The key feature is its central pivot point, which allows the camera to swing from floor level to twelve feet in the air or more, depending on the configuration. It also allows for tight corkscrew movements that would be difficult to accomplish with a traditional Steadicam or crane, perfect for twirling around a dancer.
The Mōvi is a tool Mullen’s team uses every day, but in a specific configuration. Jim McConkey describes the build as “a speed rail connected by a mount to a big fluid head on a dolly. On one end is the Mōvi, and on the other end are counterweights,” he shares. “And then there’s a smaller counterweight that you can shift up and down the pipe depending on how you want it to feel.” This setup allows the camera to “get almost anywhere, and quickly. You can also go through certain lighting setups because it’s just a thin pipe that doesn’t cause massive shadows.”
But the hero rig of any Palladino show is always the Steadicam because, as Mullen explains, “Amy likes to work directly with Jim to make adjustments. When you do a Technocrane move, you have to talk to the camera operator, the boom operator, and the pickle operator – three people are creating the move. With the Mōvi, there’s the dolly grip and the wheels operator. So, that’s two people who have to be in sync with each other. But when it’s Steadicam, it’s just one person.”
McConkey agrees. “When we rehearse, Amy likes to physically steer me into what she’s feeling. Her guidance is so simple and yet so incredibly complex. Over the years, I’ve developed what I call my ‘Amy brain.’ I really feel like I know what she’s thinking.”
Like filmmaking, ballet transports audiences into a fantastic realm where humans appear weightless enough to fly. But the mimetic aspects of ballet required the dancers’ poses and gestures to be filmed from very specific angles. As Mullen recalls: “Amy would suddenly say, ‘No, no, you have to land the camera in front at this moment because this pose is meant to be seen from the front. We can’t see it from the side; it doesn’t make sense visually.” That meant most of Étoile’s stage performances had to be captured from the house direction, but the camera was rarely out in the audience. Rather, Jim McConkey’s Steadicam had to be on stage, inside the dance, with the same speed and precision as the dancers.
It was also important to depict Étoile’s performances in a series of long, unbroken takes, using a single camera without coverage. McConkey explains, “Choreography is about being in the moment. Every time you cut, you’re going to a new place, and you’re reoriented. There’s just something about cutting from a moment to a moment that takes away a lot of ballet’s personality.”
McConkey says he understands why many filmmakers hesitate to shoot live performances with a single camera. “Directors want an escape hatch in case something doesn’t work. They want all the choices, or they fear they’ll need to control the tempo or tighten something up. And that’s all true, except when you work with Amy.”
“Amy is very musically oriented,” Mullen confirms, “and so is Dan. They’re very precise about timing and how many bars and beats they need for something to happen.” “At her heart, Amy’s a choreographer,” McConkey adds, “and she understands lenses and three-dimensional movement. So, it’s easy for me to show her what she wants to see.”
Derricks appreciates this commitment to filming dance in uninterrupted takes. “It is heartbreaking for a choreographer and dancers when their work is shot with multiple cameras, zoomed in. Then the work is never seen as it was meant to be, it’s just cut up.” With the Palladinos, Derricks confirms, “There has never in thirteen years been one time where I shed a tear over the way the choreography was shot. Not one.”
Although dancers make it look effortless, ballet is a punishing sport. Its raw physicality meant Étoile’s ballerinas, who are true athletes, couldn’t endure endless takes. Cappello notes that “working on Étoile made me realize how much strength and effort go into every jump. Every guy lifts a woman like he’s lifting a feather. But I learned, ‘Wow, we’re not going to be able to do this too many times.’”
McConkey agrees, explaining the immense pressure he felt to nail every shot. “If we did four takes, it was a lot. Around the fifth or sixth time, asking all these people as a troop to be perfect or almost perfect – it’s too much.”
Cappello often removed his focus-assisting tools – a LightRanger 2000 or a CineTape, depending on the situation – to make the ALEXA 35 even lighter. His forty years of experience enabled him to predict critical moments for focus. For one challenging shot of ballerina Lyrica Woodruff (using an FX3 on a lightweight Wonderstick), Cappello says he “was able to put a motor on the lens, but that was it. So, I took old-school measurements and prayed. There’s no focus assistance when you use that rig. It was technically very difficult, but we nailed it on the first try. Amy said, ‘That’s perfect! We don’t have to go again.’”
The AC’s experience was also essential for another key sequence – the storm scene in Episode 1 that introduces Cheyenne, played by two-time César nominee Lou de Laâge. As Mullen remembers, “Dan and Amy mentioned their inspiration for that opening shot was the famous push-in on John Wayne in Stagecoach. Supposedly, that’s the shot that made him a star.” Though that shot required a crane, the rest of the sequence was filmed on Steadicam in a water tank in Brussels. It used real water cannons to create massive blasts and waves, making the set a wet and intense environment for the crew.
Cappello wasn’t intimidated. His many credits include the famously difficult (and saltwater-heavy) Master and Commander, so he knew just what to do. “Spinning rain deflectors and other things don’t work when you’re shooting storms and using water cannons,” he explains. “You need air blowers. It’s the only way.” He chose the Prodigy Air Deflector from Bright Tangerine to keep his lenses spot-free. To protect the Steadicam, he used simple plastic bags. “I covered the whole rig, making sure there was room for it to move around, and then I strapped the air compressor to the back of Jim’s rig, where the MDR is,” Capello shares. He also cut tiny holes in the rain protection to avoid restricting the camera. “I just put little slits right where I knew the air compressor was sucking in the plastic. I knew there was going to be a lot of water, but I also knew from how the bag was formed that it wouldn’t get inside.”
McConkey, for one, was impressed. “It was the first time I’ve ever been in water where I didn’t care. It was so great because I could get hit with a wave, and the image just looked incredible. It took my fear of water away. It felt like we could do anything.” The system’s consistent performance meant McConkey could stop thinking about equipment safety and focus on the scene. “Once you get to these moments with the camera, where you stop worrying something might fail, that’s when things become more real, creative, and possible. It just becomes about the shot at that point.” As Cappelo adds proudly, “We were supposed to be there all day. We started at 10 and were done by noon.”
Trust, it seems, is the secret sauce behind Étoile. It’s what allows Sherman-Palladino’s team to capture entire performances in uninterrupted takes with no safety nets or coverage. And it empowers them to take big, creative swings, trying moves that no one has tried before. “It’s a more difficult way to work,” McConkey concludes, “but it’s also more rewarding.” The operator believes his success starts and ends with the Palladinos. “Amy supports me like I don’t think any other director has supported a person doing what I do,” he shares. “She believes that success is inevitable. That’s such an amazing quality. It’s such a positive atmosphere for me that I never feel fear.” Derricks puts it this way: “Nothing is impossible with Amy. She challenges us, herself, everyone… That’s why we’re able to do incredible shots that surprise people when they get on screen.”
Ultimately, it’s this profound level of trust within the Étoile crew that enables them to create, as Cappello puts it, “special images that truly capture the spirit” of their projects. Nobody on this team is simply a technician; they’re collaborators trying to capture a spirit. “Everyone really cares about what we’re doing,” Cappello concludes. “They love the subject matter, and that makes them ten times better because they want to do a good job.”
That passion is what allowed the Étoile team to make a far-reaching emotional impact on audiences. As McConkey reflects, “It’s the power of video, but also the power of dance. It can be healing. You rarely get a chance to understand the cumulative, positive effect it can have on large numbers of people simultaneously. I had a producer come up to me recently with tears in her eyes, telling me how much she loved Étoile and about how much the dancing meant to her.”
For McConkey, this ability to bring people together is the ultimate goal of his craft: “Filmmaking is at its best when you can create something that deeply connects to a wide variety of people,” he concludes. “Sometimes you never know about it until you have some small interaction, and then you realize how big it was, how powerful it was.”
