DP Spotlight with Iain Blair – Alicia Robbins on Bridgerton

Jul 24, 2026

By Our Man in LA, Iain Blair

Bridgerton, the Emmy-winning Netflix romance streamer, is now in its fourth season, and as it follows the twisty tale of the namesake aristocratic family set in an alternative, multi-culti London Regency era of the early 19th century, it offers American audiences everything from photogenic actors, gorgeous costumes and awesome Brit locations to steamy yet sweet plotlines. No wonder it’s been a huge hit on this side of the pond, with a fifth season already in the works.

Director of Photography Alicia Robbins, ASC, shot half of both Seasons 3 and 4, and notes that “Bridgerton is interesting because the visual style doesn’t switch a lot, but because it follows the story of one of the new Bridgerton kids each season, it gives us permission to change it up a little bit so it doesn’t have to be completely consistent from one season to the next. So, for this season, one of the main elements that changed was that we started to follow the lives of the servants in the family house, and that let us change the visual style, get a little bit grittier, and show servants’ quarters that were very small, confined spaces, which is a very unusual visual for the show. We even did some handheld stuff, which again is unusual for the show.”

During prep, Robbins, whose credits include Grey’s Anatomy and the upcoming reboot of Baywatch, worked closely with showrunner Jess Brownell and co-DP Jeff Jur. “Jeff’s been on since Season 1 so I talked to him about what he did for the two seasons before I came on, as I was actually starting Season 3 and had to set the look for it,” she reports. “We discussed motifs and what we like aesthetically. In terms of the camera package and lenses, those always remains consistent for the most part. We use Sony Venice 2 cameras and we’ve been using Arri Signature primes since Season 2, when Jeff started to use them, and they are still our lenses of choice. They are robust, yet lightweight, and the quality of the look is consistent throughout all the sizes. I do like that they are sharp but still have a softness to them that helps with smoothing skin tones. And the depth of field fall-off is smooth and creamy, giving it a classic look. Also, the fact that they can open to an F1.8 gives me the option to completely throw out the background if I want. But for the most part, I try to remain around a 2/2.8 split, especially for interior scenes. And I love the quality of the wider millimeters of the Signature Primes. I can use a 21mm without distortion to truly show off the production design of the vast and beautiful sets of Bridgerton.”

Robbins considers herself “an equipment agnostic, as I will change up what I use scene by scene and location by location depending on what is needed for the visuals,” she explains. “But some of my main go-to lights were 100K Soft Suns for day exteriors, to help keep consistent backlight in any kind of weather. In the UK, the clouds shift constantly, so maintaining some sort of consistency is crucial, and the 100K Soft Sun helps keep that balance. I used a 5K Mole Beam as my main source of sun splash for my day interiors, and I often preferred Arri 360 units as my large moonlight source for night exteriors or night interiors. Sometimes the Soft Suns would come into play for larger night exteriors. They have the capability of dimming to 10% intensity, and with some added CTB gel to get it closer to 10K Kelvin, that made it perfect for a very large moonlight source that I could place farther away than usual.”

For beauty lighting on faces, the DP often had “a combination of a larger soft source such as a Hudson Spider or a Creamsource Vortex 8 through diffusion, then wrapped with a Muslin bounce that had an Arri Orbiter bouncing into it,” she reports. “Sometimes I would also pop in a very soft eyelight such as a Dashlight with a paper lantern. Or one of my tricks was to snoot a Rotolight Anova with a 2-foot-long snoot. This gave me a bit of a spotlight that I could focus in on some of our darker skin-toned actors to bring up their faces a little without affecting the rest of the scene. This light has become known as the “Snooterella” which was actually a trick I learned on Grey’s Anatomy.” The DP also used Tiffen Soft FX filters and Tiffen Fog filters.

Bridgerton. (L to R) Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton, Martins Imhangbe as Will Mondrich, Florence Hunt as Hyacinth Bridgerton, Emma Naomi as Alice Mondrich in episode 408 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2025

All the cameras and lenses were provided by the boutique rental house Ice Film in the UK, who’ve been servicing the show since season one. All the lights came from MBS rentals. Robbins’ key crew included A Camera and Steadicam operator Doug Walshe; B Camera Ashlea Downes; A 1st AC Tom McFarling; Chief Lighting Technicians Andy Long and Shaun Moan; Key Grip Rupert Lloyd-Parry and DIT Jo Barker. “For our cable cam system, our key grip Rupert made his own version of it using a pulley system and dolly track that ran along the side of the set,” she notes. “So as the cable cam needed to ascend, the dolly would be pulled backward along the track, then vice versa for descending. This was an excellent tool because it gave us the option to incorporate cable cams more often than normal since it was a fairly easy setup to accomplish. For a simple up and down camera move that a crane couldn’t achieve, this was the simplest and most efficient way to do it.”

Picture Shop Colourist Pankaj Bajpai also played a key role in the visuals. “He’s been on since season one and every year he designs new LUTs for the show,” she explains. “And this season it was interesting because I ended up creating a new LUT for season three and then for season four we just ended up taking that LUT and modified it a little bit to accommodate for us shooting on the Venice 2 with a new sensor. And I love that he always names the LUTs something kind of cool, so this season’s was called Opera.”

The show is justly famed for its locations but ironically the new season used far fewer, “because we ended up building a massive, full-on Regency era back lot at Shepperton Studios,” explains Robbins. “So, most of the exterior scenes that you see in the show now are on that backlot where we film rather than having to go to Bath all the time, which was fantastic because it gave us control of the lighting. I was able to put up Soft Suns on every corner of that back lot, so whichever way the actors were walking or facing, I could use it as a rim or sill light. So, that was a major change, and we also had more interior-built sets versus going to these locations. But we still had some practical locations like Hampton Court that we would thoroughly scout before we shot there.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Isabella Wei as Posy Li, Michelle Mao as Rosamund Li, Katie Leung as Lady Araminta Gun, Ruth Gemmell as Lady Violet Bridgerton, Luke Thompson as Benedict Bridgerton, Yerin Ha as Sophie Baek, Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury, Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte, Emma Naomi as Alice Mondrich, Hugh Sachs as Brimsley in episode 408 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2025

In terms of the shooting schedule, “It’s pretty luxurious, as we do 40-day blocks, and shoot two episodes per block, so it’s roughly 20 days per episode,” she notes. “For TV, that is fantastic. Obviously, Netflix is streaming, so it’s different and we approach it more like a film. Now, granted, we are doing 10-hour days, so that shortens our shooting hours, but it still gives us time to make sure that every frame, every shot, is what we want and gets the attention it needs rather than having to just rush through it all.” Robbins’ DIT Jo Barker from Digital Orchard was on set all the time.

On a show full of complex, carefully choreographed scenes, she reports that the most difficult scene to shoot “was probably the five-story stairwell scene in episode four, the ending sequence where Benedict and Sophie finally collide on the stairs. That was really complicated because there was nowhere to put practical lights. The only lights that could be in frame are the candles and then there’s nowhere to put a physical unit because we’re literally going up and down the stairs and shooting a 360. So, I had to motivate the moonlight from the windows. But it’s one of those things that as we’re spinning around, I’m having to literally do in-camera lighting cues of when we’re looking at the windows, and I’m dimming down. When I’m looking away from the windows, we’re dimming back up so that I can get more exposure in there. So, it was a massive coordination of the camera going up and down on the cable cam and the lighting cues and the actors”

The DI was done in LA at Picture Shop with colorist Pankaj Bajpai. “The look is pretty baked in,” she says. “There are power windows that go in, and some shifting in color and exposure, but for the most part, because we have those LUTs that we work with on set and the way that we light it, what I’m seeing on that monitor is pretty close to what we have in the end. And even our colorist has noticed that. He’ll do some vignetting and balance it all. But in the long run, it’s close to what I was looking at on set. And I try to get as much in camera as possible. It might just be a few things where I’m looking at the frame and I’ll see a window or a back wall that might be a little too hot, but I’m not going to worry about trying to flag that. I know I can get that later in the color, and Pankaj knows the show so well at this point.”

Bridgerton. (L to R) Ruth Gemmell as Lady Violet Bridgerton, Hannah Dodd as Francesca Bridgerton, Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma, Geraldine Alexander as Mrs. Wilson in episode 408 of Bridgerton. Cr. Liam Daniel/Netflix © 2025

Summing up, Robbins, who starts shooting Season 5 later this summer, describes the experience as feeling “like the culmination of everything I’ve been doing as a DP who put in16 years of work on independent films and low budget projects before I finally got a foot in the door on a show like this. Bridgerton often feels like the pinnacle of one’s cinematography career because it is just so beautiful to shoot.”