How the cinematography of Heated Rivalry turns up the temperature

Toronto-based director of photography Jackson Parrell knew the cast and crew of Heated Rivalry were creating something special while filming the explosively popular queer hockey romance show. What he wasn’t expecting was the viewers’ outpouring of interest in his work as the show’s cinematographer. 

The six-episode Crave original series, written and directed by Jacob Tierney and based on the Game Changers novels by Rachel Reid, has taken the world by storm. Heated Rivalry has become the most in-demand Canadian series in six years, and the second most in-demand show worldwide in terms of viewership, online engagement and fan activity, reports TheWrap. 

The scenes capturing attention aren’t just the bright, electrically sharp hockey montages; it’s also the warmly lit, intimate moments, spanning the nine-year love story of on-ice rivals Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams). From tense, early rendezvous in modest hotel rooms and Las Vegas terraces lit by moonlight to bright orange beachside sunsets and a palatial cottage in Quebec, Parrell’s cinematography draws viewers deep into this unconventional story.

For Parrell, the magic of working on the show and crafting its visual language came from the trust and freedom he felt from Tierney. “The lighting and the look — I kind of had a blank slate, ” says Parrell, who created a lookbook of paintings, photography, film stills and examples of his previous work to pitch the team.

When it came to filming those steamy, beautifully lit and smartly composed love scenes that the show has become known for, Parrell says it was a constant dialogue between himself, Tierney and Chala Hunter, the show’s intimacy coordinator. “It’s important to kind of break down that wall, and bring the viewer into it,” Parrell says. “A lot of that comes from proximity and closeness to the actors, pushing my camera operators to get closer.”

“The funny thing about shooting intimacy scenes,” he adds, “is they're the least intimate things to shoot. They're so broken down to their component atoms that it turns beautiful moments into something like assembling a car, piece by piece.”

For the whole team behind Heated Rivalry, it was necessary that the show didn’t feel voyeuristic, but rather sweet and sensitive to the characters' feelings of yearning and vulnerability. The allure is how viewers are drawn in by “this gay hockey show that's like smut television, but then it very quickly isn’t,” explains Parrell. “It’s, of course, a lot of sex, but portrayals of real sex.” 

That same attentiveness extended beyond the show’s intimate scenes. Parrell says Heated Rivalry’s visuals were shaped just as much by the realities of production — a tight budget, limited locations and a short shooting schedule — as they were by any esthetic ambitions. 

However, he never felt stifled by these constraints. “The higher the budget, the more stakeholders there are, and the more people sending notes about the look of the show,” says Parrell. “This was so low-budget that we actually had a lot more creative freedom.”

In fact, shooting limitations often heightened the show’s intimacy, he says. “A lot of scenes ended up being pared down to something very simple — fewer angles, simpler coverage — which actually gave us more time to make the shots elegant.”

Some of the most recognizable and visually stunning scenes resulted from creative resourcefulness. Parrell and his team used LED volume walls to create faux sunsets and city backdrops when location shoots were outside the budget. 

One of the show’s most tender moments — when Storrie delivers a five-minute Russian monologue — happened while swapping out locations in a pinch. “We couldn’t get permission to shoot the street we wanted, so we rewrote the scene around a pink tunnel we found nearby,” says Parrell. “That flexibility ended up giving the moment more impact.”

Philip LeMoyne, lecturer and head of cinematography at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Image Arts, says crafting good cinematography that connects with audiences isn’t just about esthetics. Rather, it requires the perfect storm of knowing how to create beautiful visuals that make sense for the project and propel the actors' performances.

“It comes from the collaboration,” says LeMoyne. “You have the story side here from the director saying, ‘This is how I want my performances captured.’ But then you also have the DP saying, ‘Here's how I'm going to translate that, how I'm going to technically execute it.’” 

While watching the Heated Rivalry trailer frame by frame, LeMoyne notes, “There’s an enormous range of skills and techniques that come into making these visuals.… It all comes down to what that person is putting into their images — delivering the audience something that sets the work apart.”

Parrell isn’t a stranger to receiving acclaim for his work. In 2019, he won a Canadian Screen Award for his work on Anne with an E. But the response to Heated Rivalry has been a whole different beast, he says. The Seattle Times called Parrell’s work “utterly showstopping, from the intimate framing of Shane and Ilya to the clever focus on sunlight and shadow.” The Guardian noted: “Even the camera feels as if it’s in lust, gliding over 8%-fat sports star bodies and the glass walls of luxury flats. It’s an audacious feat, making ice hockey sexy.”

Parrell says: “It’s unique to see [the cinematography] enter the conversation the way it has, which has been so thrilling for my team.”

On his Instagram account, which has gained over 30,000 followers since the show’s release, Parrell often shares behind-the-scenes photographs as well as his favourite stills from each episode — both of which are screengrabbed, reshared, drawn and turned into video edits by fans across social platforms.

But the excitement around Heated Rivalry hasn’t been contained to online spaces either. For the release of Episode 6, Parrell snuck into Three Dollar Bill, a queer bar in Toronto that was hosting a viewing party. “I didn't let anyone know I worked on the show … and had so many conversations with people about [Heated Rivalry],” he says. 

At one point, Parrell even helped fix the bar’s projector, hooking up a friend’s laptop to stream directly from his Crave account.

“The most validating, pivotal moment in my entire career was standing in that room watching everyone watch that garbage projector play the show,” he says. “Everyone crying together was like, ‘Wow, this show is so much bigger than what we thought.’”

Heated Rivalry is streaming on Crave.