--
Jay Hunter is a celebrated director and cinematographer whose work runs the gamut from features and scripted series to documentaries and reality TV. A true innovator, he has crafted unique aesthetics for television shows such as On the Lot and films including Joss Whedons Much Ado About Nothing.
Jay s current project is the NBC comedy Superstore, about the employees of a big box retailer. For that series, he makes viewers feel like they re part of the action through a visual style that looks handheld, but is not. Jay s camera operators work with camera support systems that include Cartoni s Airfloater. The patented head perfectly simulates handheld camera movement, while relieving operators of the burden of holding heavy camera systems on their shoulders.
Jay Hunter recently spoke with Cartoni USA about his career, Superstore and the Cartoni Airfloater.
Cartoni USA: How did you get your start?
Jay Hunter: I went to college at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I went to school to be a film critic and so I thought I d take a filmmaking class. I fell in love with it. I had a background in photography, so I gravitated toward cinematography. No one in the program was very good at shooting, but I was the best of the worst, so I became the cinematographer for our graduating class. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to shoot a couple of low budget features while I was still in school and got to work early on. I bounced between being the DP on small stuff and operating on bigger productions. I was in the trenches, paying dues. Years past, I went from operator to DP and now I have an awesome job at Universal on Superstore. It s a fun, way cool job and ten minutes from home. I feel like I won the lottery.
CUSA: You ve done features, documentaries, reality TV and now a sit-com. What do you like about each genre? How do they differ?
JH: I started doing scripted work, features, commercials, and a little TV. That s my roots. When I moved to L.A., I was operating and fell into reality TV. I wasn t always jazzed about the subject matter, but I was a young guy and I learned a lot. I treated each job like I was shooting a movie, and because of that, my work stood out. I got a reputation and began to work with Mark Burnett Productions. He was doing the most high-end cinematic work in reality. It was a way to gain film experience without shooting a film. When I moved back into the scripted world, I brought with me the lessons I d learned about lighting, camera operating and blocking. For me, it s all part of the same cinematic world and telling stories. I wouldn t be the cinematographer I am today without the skills I developed in non-fiction.
CUSA: Is Superstore a good example of that? It seems to employ some reality TV techniques.
JH: Reality TV helped bring handheld camerawork back into vogue and made documentary verite a hot look. But, I think it s come full circle and that aesthetic is now blah. Superstore is a tangent, a new variation on that look. Almost everything we do has a handheld feel, but what we do differently is use extremely long lenses, often an 85mm lens. Most shows use 21mm or 25mm lenses for wide shots, and save the 85mm for close-ups. We go deep into the tele-photo world. We put our cameras far away from the action and use out of focus texture in the fore- and mid-ground. It s more observational. It walks a thin line. We don t want it to be like a stalker in the bushes. It s more like you re another shopper in the store, watching from a couple of aisles away. It s like things are happening around the audience and they become another character in the story, witnessing it from afar.
CUSA: How do you use Airfloater on the show?
JH: The show feels handheld, but 98 percent is shot with the Airfloater head. People who arrive on the set are surprised when they see them, because they assume we shoot over-the-shoulder. The Airfloater gives us the look we want without requiring the operators to have cameras on their shoulders all day. As a result, they re not going to the chiropractor and they don t want to quit the show. They walk around all day with smiles on their faces.
CUSA: Does it really make that big of a difference?
JH: You can survive a 30-day shoot working handheld, but a TV show goes for months and months. It s very hard on the operators. I ve been an operator. Ive been in their shoes and I want to be sure that they are comfortable and happy. The Airfloater is the most essential piece of gear we have on the show. I don t know what we d do without it.
CUSA: So, it keeps operators from becoming fatigued?
JH: The telephoto lenses we use are heavy and they make the camera out of balance. Operating a camera with a telephoto lens handheld can be brutal on an operator s body. We also ask them to keep it steady. If they have the camera on their shoulders, their bodies are tense; they need to maintain a certain pattern of breathing. In the old days, you might roll through a whole mag of film. Today, it s not uncommon for a director to roll for 20 or 30 minutes. If you are operating for that long and not moving, your body starts to cramp. Work a 12-hour day like that and when you go home, you roll over and die.
CUSA: The operators must like Airfloater.
JH: When we bring in day players and they find out it s a handheld show, they think, Oh god, it s going to be rough. But when they see how we execute, their eyes light up. They ask if they can get more days.
CUSA: How did you discover Airfloater?
JH: I saw it at NAB six or eight years ago. I saw if from a distance and immediately got the concept. I wondered why no one had thought of it before.
CUSA: Would you recommend it to others?
JH: If you re doing a show that requires handheld camerawork, you need the Airfloater. You can get the handheld vibe, you can use any lens and you can shoot for a long as yo
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
-- 
