‘Etoile’ Cinematographer Dissects His Favorite Shot

Étoile , the Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino vehicle canceled after one season on Amazon Prime, is awash in elegant shots of ballerina pirouettes and the opulent interior of the Opéra Garnier in Paris — which served as the inspiration for the novel The Phantom of the Opera . But it’s one specific shot in the Emmy-nominated episode “The Swap” that cinematographer David Mullen finds more graceful than the others.

In the scene, a negotiation over lunch to swap dancers between a Paris and a New York ballet company, in an attempt to save their institutions, is interspersed with a series of flash cuts to the individual performers onstage.

“The first one was described as a black box theater where the dancer is doing incredible leaps in the air, and that’s all I had to work with,” Mul