Inside the Look of Dan Levy's 'Big Mistakes': How Cinematographer Christine Ng Blended Comedy and Crime

Big Mistakes Interview Christine Ng Cinematographer

As a kid, Christine Ng dreamed of being on a crew. The cinematographer, who shot four episodes of Big Mistakes, knew from a young age a set is where she belonged. The sense of community spoke to her – getting together and making something.

By the time she got to NYU film school, she wore many hats and tried different departments. Ultimately, toward the end of her studies, she knew she was a cinematographer. As Ng put it to What’s on Netflix, “I found my way into it.”

She worked her way toward directing episodes of shows such as Poker Face, English Teacher, and Ziwe. With Big Mistakes, she shot four episodes of the comedy crime show created by Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) and Rachel Sennott (I Love LA). Ng was the cinematographer for episodes three and four, as well as the penultimate episode and finale, in which the siblings from Jersey find themselves partying like true criminals in Miami.

Christine Ng spoke with What’s on Netflix about her approach to the series, balancing comedy and crime, and why television means so much to her.

When you read the script of Big Mistakes, how did that appeal to your taste and what you like on television and want to see?

Well, I’m definitely a huge fan of Dan Levy before I even read the script. I was a big Schitt’s Creek fan, but also I worked with him on a few commercials after Schitt’s Creek. I met him on a commercial with his dad. It was like an EQ Bank commercial with this amazing director, Ally Pankiw, and that’s how I met Dan.

I heard about the show coming up, so I asked my agents, “Where’s it shooting? Can I get a meeting?” And they’re like, “Oh, it’s actually shooting in New York, New Jersey. Let me set it up.” I got the scripts and I was like, “Oh my God, this is so much fun.” I think there’s so much pressure on someone like Dan to create something that’s going to be a hit. And of course, you don’t want to, as a creator, do the same thing over and over again.

So reading this, I was really excited because I just knew that it wasn’t going to be like Schitt’s Creek. And then I’m like, “Well, what’s it going to be like?” As someone who has shot some kind of mystery-thriller type things, from Poker Face to English Teacher to now Adults and doing some comedy, this was the bridge of all those things that I love. It’s a little bit of spooky, silly comedy crime thing, but then also very funny and grounded in this amazing family dynamic. The challenge of this fine line between the two genres was something really fun to see on paper.

You got comedy and you got crime. Visually, we know what those two genres typically look like. Did you want to land somewhere in the middle of them with Big Mistakes?

Totally. I co-shot this with another DP, Ava Berkofsky (Insecure), who is someone I’ve admired for many years. They started the show. In the way that television works, the lead DP starts and sets the look, but we found out that we were both on it as they were prepping. And so, that is very rare because usually it starts and then someone else joins. Because we both knew each other, we were texting on the side and being collaborative from the beginning, which is so special and generous of a lead because sometimes that dynamic doesn’t necessarily exist. So they were like, “I’m testing these lenses. What do you think?”

Where’d you both go from there?

Once they kind of settled on the package, they started shooting and I was watching the dailies. We were talking about colorists and then they chose this amazing person, Élodie [Ichter] from Picture Shop, who is a big part of executing the vision of the show. I would say the LUT makes the kind of textural quality that I associate with this show, which is grounded in reality. It definitely feels like real life, but there is kind of a grittiness to it. Especially with just how the story plays out and the locations they end up in, it gives us really a chance to dive deeper into the crime thriller aspect of it versus the kind of lighthearted comedy that it could very well be in the family dynamic.

You get to go from a small-town comedy to a Miami crime story by episode seven.

That was really fun. It was at the tail end of our season where I was shooting another block, I was shooting three and four, and then I started reading seven and eight. And then I was like, when are we shooting this? How are we shooting this? Because we were here in Jersey, but it had to be Miami or it had to be just somewhere that had a different climate with palm trees.

We actually ended up in Puerto Rico. I remember having to go scout after we finished tech scouting in Jersey and then getting on a plane the next day and scouting over the weekend and coming back and starting the next block and then finishing the block and then getting on a plane and flying to Puerto Rico to shoot that. But those scenes in Puerto Rico add this element of fear and like, oh, they’re really stepping into this next level.

They’re fully immersed.

Fully immersed in this next level of crime that they were not in Edison, New Jersey. That idea of the writers to take our characters and move them somewhere else elevates the look of the show. It helped not just the look, but also the story.

There’s absolutely a clear visual arc in Big Mistakes. By the last two episodes, they’re full-on crime stories.

Totally.

So did you want more darkness, more shadows by the end?

I did, but then I think I also have to understand that when they go back to New Jersey, they’re back in their normal world. You can’t be so heavy-handed with that. I think that was something that Dan was really good about communicating, like, yes, the characters are here and we know we’re here, but once they go back, it should be normal. And so, if you go too far, it’s like leading the horse to water in a way, because the twist at the end would be maybe too obvious.

It’s like they’re going to this celebration of the mayoral win, right? You’re not expecting the ending to be the ending. If we pushed it further, then you would be like, wait, is there another shoe that’s going to drop? So there’s this, again, balance of not giving too much away, but then when they’re in the closet together, Elizabeth Perkins and Taylor Ortega, okay, let’s make it a little bit more sinister in a very subtle way.

After that scene, it’s like, “Okay, do we make the party a little moodier?” But I just don’t know if an event like that would be so moody.

BIG MISTAKES. (L to R) Ilia Volok as Andrei, Mark Ivanir as Ivan, Alfredo Huereca as Paolo, Dan Levy as Nicky, and Taylor Ortega as Morgan in Episode 107 of Big Mistakes. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

What did you appreciate about the color and light when you got there?

Oh my God, Puerto Rico for me was such a whirlwind because of the schedule of prepping here, shooting here, going down there and just going straight into it. But the crew was really great there. A lot of them, because we shot in a couple of clubs and they’re all from Puerto Rico, so they were all like, “Oh yeah, I used to party here when I was 15.” It’s changed a lot. 20 years ago, it was a foam party place. They kept telling all these funny stories.

How about pulling off the shootout?

That was actually a lounge in the hotel we were staying in. And so, the best part of that was when we were shooting the martini, we were all like, wait, let’s go get martinis literally when we wrapped. We walked up the stairs and went to the hotel bar and got martinis. So much fun.

But Puerto Rico was great. was such a fun way to end the show because it was a hard show. Everything’s hard, like scheduling, timing. When we got to the very end of shooting it, everyone was like, “Ugh, we can breathe.” We did it. It was such a great sense of camaraderie to be there together.

That’s excellent. To wrap up, you grew up in Hong Kong watching a lot of television with your family. At the dinner table, you’d watch TV. Anything about your early days of watching television shows that maybe stays with you as you make them today?

I was born in Hong Kong, moved to America when I was two and a half. I went back to Hong Kong when I was nine. We lived there for about a year and then I came back to America. But growing up, my parents and my family, my sister, were all very culturally Chinese. Coming to America, my parents didn’t know English and they wanted to watch TV all the time.

We watched Hong Kong television, and I speak Cantonese fluently, mostly because of that. And then when we went back to Hong Kong when I was nine, I was still watching Hong Kong television. There was one day where we walked outside the apartment and they were filming [a TV show] outside. I listened to Hong Kong Cantonese pop and my favorite singer was also an actor, who was filming this TV show we stumbled across.

Actually, that was the moment when I was like, oh my God, I want to work on film, because I didn’t realize how many people it took to make something. There were a hundred people around making stuff and my parents let me stay up all night to watch.

Television for me holds this special place. Being able to be on set for something like that just randomly was pivotal for me. And then coming back and watching everything like TGIF was a big influence of growing up, watching Saved by the Bell, all these shows that were very sitcom-y that actually had really good values for children.

It’s so different now, but television for me growing up was always on. It was one thing that my parents always let us watch. I didn’t have a bedtime and they were like, “Yeah, watch whatever.” Mainly they didn’t really know what was happening on television. But that was actually great for me because I literally got to watch anything I wanted. TV is really special for me.