THS: The fans love seeing that too, I think, because it helps make the show feel fresh.

Mahlon: I love watching the fan reviews on Youtube where they have the picture in picture and you can see the show in the bottom corner. There’s a group of girls that watch the show, they’re hilarious. There’s a bunch of couples that do that, too. Usually during hiatus I’ll go back and watch most of those, because a lot of times nobody specifically talks about the cinematography, but when a shot comes up they’ll react to it and you can tell whether they liked it or not or thought it was cool or funny or whatever. The way I sort of look at reviews of the show specifically for the cinematography is by watching their reaction.

It’s been a year of love for the Legends.

THS: This season has had a lot more romance than this show has ever had before, especially thematically relevant romance. Avalance, Ray and Nora , and Constantine and Dez are all dealing with darkness versus light in terms of their relationships. Do those character considerations affect how you shoot certain scenes?

Mahlon: For sure. There’s sequences that on paper seem like very small scenes that you just blow through. But they’re probably the most key moments of the episode for the relationship between two characters. In particular for me, the lighting needs to be appropriate and help with the moments. You want to focus on the fact that they’re pausing in the middle of all this action, and there’s a little romantic exchange between the two. In the Explorers Club episode, we did a couple of shots where we didn’t do coverage of the scene. We wanted the two actors in the same frame so that you could see the other reacting to the dialogue as opposed to the editor cutting between one and the other.

So the blocking had them always in the same shot together. And the lighting itself was very glamorous, very nice wraparound lighting on their faces even though they’re supposed to be hiding off to the side from the bad guys. It seems like the weirdest spot for them to have a romantic moment, but suddenly they get into this lighting that’s a two shot – and you have this awesome moment that is maybe half a page of dialogue in the script, but it’s a key turning point in the episode. When we’re in prep, we’re trying to figure out when those moments are in the script and making sure that we slow down and get as many takes as we need to get the performances accurate. We want to know that the actors are happy with what they’re delivering, and that we cover everything we need to tell the story.

THS: Looking forward to the rest of the season, and best of luck with hiatus endeavors.

Mahlon: Thanks so much. I’m curious what we’re going to do next season, too!

Legends of Tomorrow returns with Season 4 on Monday, April 1st at 9/8c.

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