In this video, YouTube critic and filmmaker The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak) looks at how Emmy-nominated director Reed Morano and her cinematographer Colin Watkinson “created an extremely concentrated aesthetic, one that is beautiful and terrifying at the same time” for The Handmaid’s Tale. Specifically, Puschak looks at how they use a technique known as shallow focus to help us identify with Offred and her life in an authoritarian state and to heighten the story’s underlying message.

Helping to establish an aesthetically singular world with Season 1 of Hulu’s dystopian drama The Handmaid’s Tale, cinematographer Colin Watkinson received his first Emmy for his efforts, and returned to expand the series’ visual boundaries in Season 2. Watkinson recently sat down at Hulu’s offices for Deadline’s Production Value video series to discuss his craft, and the thinking that went into defining the look of Bruce Miller’s drama based on Margaret Atwood’s novel.

Developed by showrunner Bruce Miller from Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the post-American religious fundamentalist state of Gilead. The story follows Offred (Elisabeth Moss), one of a group of handmaids who are forced into lives of subservience and tasked with bearing children for the barren wives of their totalitarian masters.

Liverpool-born cinematographer Colin Watkinson quit his job as a surveyor to work as an entry-level “runner” on a British soundstage, rose through the ranks to shoot Tarsem Singh’s The Fall in 2006, and on the strength of that film’s universally hailed visuals, became one of Los Angeles’ most prolific television commercial DPs. By the time cinematographer-turned director Reed Moreno invited him to shoot The Handmaid’s Tale in Toronto, he had a signature style firmly in place.

Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my honour to welcome Colin Watkinson. In this interview he talks about the evolution of the field of cinematography in the last couple of decades and how the transition to digital changed the dynamics on set, the role of the cinematographer, and telling stories with moving light. Around these topics and more, Colin dives deep into his work on the first season of the critically acclaimed “The Handmaid’s Tale” on which he shot all ten episodes, building the back story and the visual universe of Gilead.

The Handmaid’s Tale” presented a brain-twisting production challenge for cinematographer Colin Watkinson and Reed Morano, an executive producer and director of the first three episodes. The show takes place in a near-future Gilead, where enslaved women forced to reproduce for the aristocracy wear costumes that reference a puritanical time — but the show isn’t a period piece. They needed to create a world that was “other” and could serve as sharp contrast to present-day flashbacks.

Looking bloodier and more harrowing than ever, The Handmaid’s Tale is back for a second season. Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, the series is set in a totalitarian society ruled by a fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state.

Watching the latest trailer for The Handmaid’s Tale season 2, I realized three things: 1) I will binge-watch all of the new season the day it comes out, even though it gives me a serious stomach ache; 2) Elizabeth Moss should win awards just for her face and and its ability to communicate ALL THE EMOTIONS; 3) Margaret Atwood can write a hell of a beautiful sentence about dark, horrible things. She just has a way of distracting you with her wordsmithery (…that’s a word, right?) and sharp wit, so that you don’t realize that you’ve totally been gutted until it’s too late. But, like, in a good way. Just look at these The Handmaid’s Tale quotes:

Blessed be the fruit! The Handmaid’s Tale won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series — surprising no one who’d seen it claim seven other awards in the lead-up. What tied the series together and made its look so striking and memorable was Reed Morano’s (also Emmy-winning) direction of the first three episodes. In what may or may not be a sign of progress, that makes her the first woman to win in that category since Mimi Leder for ER in 1995.

IMDB entry for Bruce Miller director of A Handmaid's Tale television program. A religion-based autocracy has taken over most of the United States, renaming the country Gilead. In this country women are second-class citizens. Anyone trying to escape is punished. One such person is June, who is captured while trying to escape with her husband and child and is sentenced to be a handmaid, bearing children for childless government officials.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” executive producer Bruce Miller was an aspiring writer, living in Los Angeles, when the landmark medical drama “ER” premiered on NBC in 1994. The show’s pilot upended almost everything he had been taught, up until then, about writing a script.

The Handmaid’s Tale series creator Bruce Miller says he is as horrified as the rest of us, to watch the dramatised events of dystopian Gilead so closely mirror reality.
“It’s heartbreaking when you come up with the worst thing you can imagine and then someone does it. We are often unfortunately relevant. I would love our show to be irrelevant.”

In the spring of 1984 I began to write a novel that was not initially called “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I wrote in longhand, mostly on yellow legal notepads, then transcribed my almost illegible scrawlings using a huge German-keyboard manual typewriter I’d rented.

Margaret Atwood has admitted having no control over the TV version of her harrowing novel The Handmaid’s Tale but, she says, she has no problem with that.

Fertile women kept as breeding stock. A reversion to Old Testament morality. Men as the "divine emperors" of their households – and of society. Margaret Atwood's dystopian classic was never a subtle metaphor. Published in the mid-1980s when second wave feminism was peaking (and the concomitant backlash gaining strength), The Handmaid's Tale was always intended to be cautionary, but not even the most pessimistic could envision the extent to which misogyny and the religious right would still dominate women's lives 30 years down the track.

What critics are saying about Hulu’s new series The Handmaid’s Tale is true: It’s eerily reminiscent of our present-day reproductive dystopia; the acting, costumes and mise-en-scène are stunning and the story is terrifying—both because of its totalitarianism and everyday sexism. What critics are not saying is also true: the story’s torture is real as is its racism.

If you haven’t already heard, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the best shows on television right now…maybe the best. The script, the acting, the music, the directing—every element of the show works together to create an utterly compelling dystopian narrative based off of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name. Perhaps the most underrated component of the show’s ghostly tone, however, is the cinematography