With a fairly dark, noirish cinematic approach to his episodic work, like his lighting, Billeter brings a minimalist approach to his photography, as well. Lensing with Panavision PVintage primes, which are newly rehoused and Ultra Speeds from the seventies, he felt the organic construction of the classic line of glass counterbalanced nicely with the high-resolution digital sensor of the RED Dragon, which helped to give it more of a crime-and-suspense feel over fantasy or science-fiction. “They had a flawed look to them,” he explains, “they aren’t perfectly flat, they’re not perfectly sharp all across the image, but that’s what I thought would help tell the story better, this story of a broken-down, former super-hero with PTSD.”

Billeter likes to shoot wide on night exteriors to incorporate backdrops, and in this case, he says that the city helps to unify the Marvel universe across so many narratives. On more typical projects, he will employ a lot of color gels for practicals because there are so many light sources that come into play at night, like street signs, lamps posts, store fronts and traffic lights. On the nighttime exteriors for Jessica Jones, however, he preferred an overall desaturated tone, so he chose to work frequently with Super White Flame gels not only to match practicals like the sodium-vapor but also to achieve a signature look.