Behind the shot: The Pitt

Johanna Coelho, AFC breaks down her favourite moment in Emmy-winning medical drama The Pitt

Words: Nicola foley | Images: HBO

Following the lives of healthcare workers at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, each series of The Pitt takes the audience through one 15-hour shift in real time. With a cast led by Noah Wyle (best known previously for his role in another acclaimed hospital drama, ER) as Dr Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch, it’s been an Emmy standout from its first series.

For cinematographer Johanna Coelho, AFC, one sequence in Season 2, episode 15 captures the show at its best. After saving a mother and baby during an emergency C-section, Robby is overcome with emotion. “This moment is told through a few intercut shots: some on Robby’s face and some over his shoulder to show what he sees – the baby being saved and Abbot watching him,” says Coelho. “For me, it’s a perfect representation of the universe of The Pitt and the level of intensity and emotion they are going through. It also shows how much they care for their job and each other.”

The scene unfolds from Robby’s perspective, so Coelho wanted to make sure his responses were centred. “The choice of shots here are the core of our visual language. To emphasise his emotions, we physically got closer to his face, forcing the audience to feel the intensity of his pain,” she shares.

With lots of different elements to consider – a prosthetic belly, special effects to show the newborn breathing, blood and makeup – the big challenge was coordination. “Our storytelling is fast and precise, which forces the camera to land somewhere at the right time and right place. We have to know the scene really well to be able to be invisible in our choreography, explains Coelho. “For example, when Robby sees the baby is breathing and starts having a moment, the OB-GYN enters and interrupts Robby, which forces him to move away from the table. This timing was hard to hit because of how precise and fast all of these moments are happening.”

Once director John Wells had blocked the scene, Coelho worked closely with the AD team, makeup, prosthetics and VFX supervisors to get a handle on the sequence’s practical limitations. “It was important to know how many resets we could have with the belly prosthetic, as well as how we could capture the baby starting to breathe without seeing the special effects team in the wider shot,” she recalls. Then, the crew designed the camera moves around key emotional beats, before bringing in operators Erdem Ertal and Aymae Sulick to coordinate movement with the actors, props and background action.

It was captured on two ARRI ALEXA Mini LF cameras with Angénieux lenses, with both operators shooting handheld around the operating table while a ZeeGee rig followed Robby through the room. Coelho describes the show as functioning like a live theatre, with the team aiming to shoot a scene from beginning to end without interruption.

The set was built to work as a 360° lighting set-up, mostly coming from overhead and bouncing back from the hospital’s white wall. “Every time we use additional lighting for their faces, they have to be moving lights: either a battery-operated DMG DASH light on a pole, or our custom onboard camera lights, bicolour and fully controllable,”
she elaborates.

Because of the stark white surrounds, the team wanted to introduce colour contrast to distinguish different areas on-set. “We have warm cans (3200K) around the main area, but for the trauma room I wanted a cooler feel,” she explains. “We decided to use cooler cans (5000K) than our camera white-balance (4000K) to give a more intense, serious feel. These rooms are equipped with real trauma boom lights used for surgery.”

While being amazing for realism, these came with the added challenge of being ‘extremely bright with a strange frequency’, which the team didn’t have much control over since they couldn’t actually be adjusted. “When shooting with them, we had to come up with a special look setting. To help the brightness, we raised the whole light level of our set one stop brighter, we put an ND 0.3 in our cameras to keep the same T-stop (T4 at 800 ISO) and adjusted the camera shutter. We call it The Trauma Look.”

Looking back on this moment and the series in its entirety, Coelho’s proudest achievement is how it says so much with so few words: “It tells you a lot without too much dialogue. It really is about the intimacy of the camera with the amazing acting of Noah Wyle.”

The Pitt is streaming now on HBO Max in the US and Now or Sky in the UK

This article appears in the June/July 2026 issue of Definition