“The Perfect Couple” Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut on Framing Netflix’s Sun-Soaked Nantucket Noir

“It was one of the most stress-free jobs I’d ever done,” cinematographer Shane Hurlbut tells The Credits during a video call about the Netflix murder mystery The Perfect Couple. Based on a book of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand, the mini-series is created by Jenna Lamia and stars Nicole Kidman and Liv Schreiber as husband and wife living in a breathtaking beachfront property on the tiny island of Nantucket. But on the eve of their son Benji’s (Billy Howle) wedding to Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson), there’s a tragic death among the guests. What unfolds is a plot-twisting whodunit that will have your finger-pointing to the bitter end.  

Hurlbut credits splitting all six chapters with fellow cinematographer Roberto De Angeles as the reason for the enjoyable environment. “Roberto and I did eight movies together, in which he was the camera operator and I was the director of photography. He already had this amazing relationship with Perfect Couple director Susanne Bier, so he brought me on to divide and conquer.” How it worked was that De Angeles handled the visual aesthetics, designing the camera compositions with Bier and speaking with the production designer about color and texture, while Hurlbut oversaw the technical side of the lighting and specialty gear that went into making each scene.  “It allowed Roberto to concentrate on what Susanne wanted and how she wanted it to feel. Then he would tell me what that was, and I would make that happen. It was so efficient,” says Hurlbut.

A lookbook was essential in developing the language. “Suzanne really let Roberto and I design the whole movie. It was really kind of a gift from the gods, which allowed her to concentrate on the blocking, the acting, the script, and the performances,” says Hurlbut. “Then, if we needed to move or change the plan, we could decide what we wanted to do as long as it stuck to her original plan, which was this idea of rich, wealthy, sun-drenched July 4th at the Cape. She described it as a ’popcorn suspense thriller.’”  

The cinematographer’s imagery is a creamy blend of color and contrast with warm, golden hues. The camera effortlessly moves through scenes as if you are a guest at the party, and sweeping shots show Nantucket as a looming character. But the allure is having the mystery unfold in broad daylight. “We specifically made stuff not during the night because we felt it was going to be the script and the actors who brought the darkness, the drama, the suspense, and the skeletons in the closet,” mentions Hurlbut. “We wanted to have these light, airy, and beautifully sun-drenched visuals and show you Nantucket like you’ve never seen it before.” The seemingly endless Nantucket sunsets played a helping hand as well. “I’d never shot sunsets where we could shoot 45 to 50 minutes. I was like, what is this place? Have I gone into a time warp,” Hurlbut says jokingly. “You could really captivate this very fragility of light.”

The opening sequence invites the audience in through a montage of beach-goers, sailing ships, and breaching whales before gliding over the open ocean towards an estate with its own private beach. It’s paradise. “The aerial was everything to us. We flew a helicopter a mile and a half away from Nantucket and captured the whole island as an essence,” notes Hurlbut. “Roberto and I wanted to see the scope of this island and take in the glamor and the wealth that Nantucket and the Cape are all about.”

Every frame of The Perfect Couple opening credits is perfect. pic.twitter.com/o9O4ybcHnp

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The surrounding environment also helped move the action from scene to scene. “Susanne uses these kinds of environmental and nature-esque shots to transition into a scene or tell you the time of day. It’s never a hard cut but three or four transition shots that really set up the mood so the viewer can say, ‘ok, here I am.’” For a story that jumps in time, the transitions provide audience clarity, especially moments in flashback or when it moves from day to night, the camera swings and tilts to a brightly lit moon.

“One of the challenges was the flashback because we have flashbacks that go back one or two days and then others that go back to six months and a year. We didn’t want the earlier flashback to feel any different, but for the later, we did it with a little browner tonality and added a little grain vignette so you felt like you were going back,” he says.

Another visual shift happens during the interrogation room scenes where detectives shake down clues from witnesses. The cinematographers mixed in a slightly cooler feeling to the smaller space.  “It was a big discussion for Roberto and me because the interrogation room is the epicenter for all the discovery in this movie. So we thought, let’s take one single fluorescent light and put it over a stainless steel table and let it play in the room,” he says. “We chose a very dark blue color, like a blue-gray, so the light would fall off. I knew that the top light was going to work for all the female characters because we were creating a specific line so the whole face sees the light, and it was going to wrap into their eyes. Then any light that doesn’t wrap into their eyes would hit that stainless steel table and give a double reflection.”  The reflection subliminally adds to the duality of the characters, leaving you wondering who is and who is not telling the truth.

Find out who the liars are—The Perfect Couple is now streaming on Netflix.

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Featured image: The Perfect Couple. (L to R) Liev Schreiber as Tag Winbury, Nicole Kidman as Greer Winbury in episode 103 of The Perfect Couple. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024