Cory Stillman
Investigation Discovery’s Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV captivated audiences earlier this year with its cold and careful glimpse into the abusive culture perpetuated by producer Dan Schneider at Nickelodeon throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. Much has been said about the bravery of the show’s subjects, including child stars like Alexa Nikolas and Drake Bell, the latter of which divulged the horrifying details of his sexual abuse at the hands of dialogue coach Brian Peck.
Behind the camera for all those upsetting and explosive interviews stood cinematographer Víctor Tadashi Suárez, one of the most respected names in documentary filmmaking today. Suárez is perhaps most well known for his work on the New York Times series The Weekly, but Quiet on Set marked one of the greatest creative challenges of his young career.
“There are only so many ways to skin the cat that is the interview setup,” Suárez says. “For me, a big part of the role is figuring out how to create a look within the formal constraints that feels unique. And that’s never easy. The rest — the recreations, the evocative visuals, that’s all much more straightforward. The magic, I think, is in creating an interview frame that feels original.”
Suárez achieved that originality with Quiet on Set by inverting the established aesthetic of children’s TV. Because of the docuseries’ sensitive subject matter, Suárez developed a darker palette for the show, occasionally leaning into surreal splashes of color.
“For our interviews, we took normally invisible behind-the-scenes spaces — the makeup room, the writer’s room, the edit suite — and made them center stage,” Suárez explains. “We used the same color palette these shows used, but lit our scenes to be moody and dramatic, rather than bright and poppy.”
Suárez was afforded a great deal of creative freedom from Quiet on Set director/EP Mary Robertson, with whom he previously collaborated on The Weekly, including the popular “Controlling Britney Spears” episode. It was his trust in Robertson’s journalistic integrity that first drew Suárez to Quiet on Set.
“This subject is full of potential traps and landmines, so I definitely would have been very apprehensive about pursuing this topic if it were with a team that I didn’t know.”
Fortunately, with Suárez’ inventive visuals, Quiet on Set emerges as a compelling and necessary piece of documentary filmmaking.
Check out our full conversation with Suárez below to learn more about his own takeaways from his time shooting Quiet on Set, streaming now on Max.
How were you approached for Quiet On Set and what excited you about working on this project?
Mary Robertson, [the director and EP of Quiet on Set] called me one day and pitched me on the project. I’ve known her for a long time — we started working together back in 2017 when developing the look together for The New York Times series, The Weekly. We did “Controlling Britney Spears” together and a number of other films that were very satisfying collaborations, so I’m always grateful to receive a call from her. She told me about the series and I was immediately interested. I grew up watching All That and The Amanda Show, and as a kid, thought they were the pinnacle of funny and cool. On a personal level, I was excited to dive into this investigation. And creatively, I was very excited to create a visual world based on source material that was my childhood TV pop culture.
Was there anything that concerned or scared you of telling this particular story?
Definitely, yes. Of the long list of horrors that I’ve witnessed second-hand shooting documentaries, stories about kids are the ones that I find hardest to process. But I knew Mary and Emma and the whole team would be approaching this topic with sensitivity and journalistic integrity, so that gave me a lot of confidence going into it. This subject is full of potential traps and landmines, so I definitely would have been very apprehensive about pursuing this topic if it were with a team that I didn’t know.
What were the early conversations you had with the team as it related to capturing and creating Quiet On Set?
We wanted to build a world that was the inversion of these kids TV shows. If the images on TV were the dream, this world was the nightmare. For our interviews, we took normally invisible behind-the-scenes spaces — the makeup room, the writer’s room, the edit suite — and made them center stage. We used the same color palette these shows used, but lit our scenes to be moody and dramatic, rather than bright and poppy. The color is a bit insane, dialed up to make everything feel surreal; splashes of slime green and colored hair; lights that don’t necessarily make much sense in the real world but hopefully have a certain dream logic when cut against the archival.
What do/did you see as the role of the cinematographer when it comes to shows like Quiet On Set, Controlling Britney Spears, and Batali: The Fall of a Superstar Chef?
It can be very challenging being the DP for these kinds of shows. Yes, your role is fundamentally the same as always — you want to create a look and language that advances the storytelling. But for these kinds of projects, you’re very limited by the conventions of the genre. There are only so many ways to skin the cat that is the interview setup. For me, a big part of the role is figuring out how to create a look within the formal constraints that feels unique. And that’s never easy. The rest — the recreations, the evocative visuals, that’s all much more straightforward. The magic, I think, is in creating an interview frame that feels original.
Can you talk us through choices around the recreations and evocative visuals on set? Is there one that stands out to you the most when you think back on the show?
One of the questions this series asks is if it can ever be ethical for children to be employed as on-camera talent. So, we knew right off the bat that using child actors in our visuals was off the table. It ended up being a really wonderful constraint that challenged us to be more creative in our approach to the recreations. We treated these scenes like we were exploring a memory: you don’t get a good look at any of the faces, but the details are crystal clear. For example, in one of our sequences, we needed some visuals to play for Drake’s story of the first time he was abused. Now, there’s a million ways we could have done this. But we wanted to treat this sequence very delicately. We experience the scene through Drake’s POV; like an out-of-body experience. We focus on a child’s backpack slung across a chair, on a pattern of light dancing across the wall. And I think it captures a kind of emotional truth about the experience that was all the more powerful for what it left to the imagination.
Was there a particular moment on set of this production that will always stand out to you?
What stuck with me is not what I would have expected. It’s not the headline-grabbing allegations. Instead, I find myself thinking a lot about the lives that were derailed by all the petty, small, toxic, abuses that eventually became too much to endure; all the creative talent and potential that the world was robbed of. I feel like that often gets lost in the conversation. The workplace culture broke a lot of people’s spirits, kids and adults. No one really escaped unscathed.
As more individuals continue to come forward about what took and continues to take place behind and in front of the camera, what do you hope that audiences can learn or take away from this particular subsection of the TV and film industry?
We’ve all been blown away by the tremendous response that this series has received and it’s been so meaningful to see it inspire so many people to come forward to share their own stories of abuse. I think part of the reason why this resonated so broadly is that a lot of the evidence was hiding in plain sight. I hope one of the things we take away from this is to learn to listen to those quiet voices around us — there are still lots of stories out there that need to be listened to and shared. The show’s success also proves that there is still an appetite for more “Me Too” stories, and that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done beyond calling out people who abuse their positions of authority. There is still no law forbidding registered sex offenders from working on sets with children. And many states still don’t require background checks for people working with kids.
What do you personally take away from Quiet On Set that will carry through to your other work?
This definitely makes me rethink the ethics around working with minors. For whatever reason, we don’t typically think of child actors when we are talking about child labor. But of course, that’s exactly what it is. And we all have to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make sure, if we are working with minors on set, that they feel safe and empowered to say no.
What do you hope to do next?
I’m very lucky to have a full plate that’s a healthy mix of different types of projects. I have a feature film in competition at Tribeca, Driver, which, though it is also partially about abuse, is very much on the opposite end of the nonfiction spectrum: a completely observational film about women in trucking. I’ve also been shooting a feature film, coming soon, called The Return — a half interview, half verite-driven film about The White House’s efforts to free American hostages held abroad. Aside from that, I’ve been shooting a lot with 16mm film, and I’m looking for more ways to bring that medium into docs. That’s my main interest right now.
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