‘Abbott Elementary’ Is Always in the Right Ballpark — Literally So, for One Very Special Episode

Director Randall Einhorn has shot every kind of TV show from “The Office” to “Fargo” to “The Muppets.” But his work on “Abbott Elementary” set the visual language of the ABC series for a very specific purpose. Just like the good teachers of Philadelphia’s most (in)famous elementary school, Einhorn, his fellow directors, and the show’s cinematographers and camera team do not want viewers to be passengers, passively receiving information.

They want us to be participants. 

Creating a lighthearted, participatory visual style often means visuals that have to strike a balance: depicting the “Abbott” teachers in a clean, cinematic way that emphasizes the everyday heroism of teaching as a vocation and also making frames messy, or slyly reacting with the camera, making the audience lean in. 

“It is that fine balance of making [the shot] look caught and making it look good,” Einhorn told IndieWire. “What I always say when I’m directing — I want the audience leaning in when they can’t see something well enough. The reason they can’t see something well enough is not an accident. It’s because I want them paying attention and leaning in so that when there’s something really delicious that does come along and appears [in camera], it’s very savory.” 

This is hard enough on the normal “Abbott” sets, where every light has been intentionally placed, and the whole environment is controlled and optimized for filming. But when “Abbott Elementary” takes field trips, which have only gotten more ambitious over the course of the Quinta Brunson show’s five seasons, it becomes a whole other beast. Or whatever species of fauna the Phillie Phanatic is. 

‘Abbott Elementary’ Disney

Indeed, Episode 4 of Season 5, “Ballgame,” involved a lot of shooting at the Phillies’ stadium of Citizens Bank Park, both on an actual game day and an off-day where the show needed to capture 14 pages of dialogue while they could still, somehow, control the sound. Einhorn, the producing director of “Abbott Elementary,” preps top-down schematics of everything in his episodes to sketch out how the cameras can interact with the characters and not see each other. But now he needed to do that with extremely fixed set conditions, changing weather conditions, and about 400 extras. 

“We had three wedges [of seats] because we have three cameras. So we had to cover a fair bit of area with people,” Einhorn said. “I shot all the dialogue pieces and everything that was supposed to be happening on the non-game day, but [the characters] are also reacting to what’s happening on the field. So I’m whipping down to what’s happening on the field, hoping tomorrow that that does actually happen.” 

‘Abbott Elementary’ Disney

Einhorn had 70 planned whips to connect the Off Day and Game Day footage for the hijinks of “Abbott” crew showing up to a Teacher Appreciation game at Citizens Bank Park. There ended up being 140 times that Einhorn and his team whip all the cameras between what was happening with them in the stands and what was meant to be happening on the field, or up to the Fanavision that Ava (Janelle James) will stop at nothing to get her and boyfriend O’shon (Matthew Law) on the Kiss Cam.  

Of course, what actually happened on Game Day was Phillies’ star Kyle Schwarber, set to have a little cameo in the episode, hit four home runs. “ What the hell?” Einhorn joked. “But you could see it was very real. [The reactions] went back to Sheryl Lee Ralph, and her eyes are crazed, you know? She’s a great actor, but this was real. She was like, ‘Yeah!’ It was [her being] a Phillies fan, and it was really, really fun to see.” 

‘Abbott Elementary’ Disney

Einhorn had rehearsed Schwarber before the game; and then after the four homers, he came back on the field and the “Abbott” crew had to shoot out his scene — nearly two and a half pages with the full show ensemble, 10 characters plus entrances and exits — in half an hour because the sprinklers were about to come on. “All of this is happening whether we’re ready for it or not,” Einhorn said. 

But the somewhat guerrilla nature of the shoot enhances the things that help make the style of “Abbott Elementary” such a fun one. “We were really far away from our characters, but that’s also a look that I really like. It gives you that feeling that you’re privy to something that maybe you shouldn’t be privy to. It makes hearing what they say and seeing what they do just that little bit more delicious,” Einhorn said. 

And after all the planning and all the logistics and all the shifting cloud cover, it makes the spontaneous moments of magic all the more special. “This was really, really difficult. I’ve never had to do 14 pages in a day with 10 characters on location. It makes you pay attention, and it takes a village,” Einhorn said. “But sometimes — our camera operators are so good. There’s one shot. Kyle Schwarber hits this home run, boom, and Jeremiah [Smith], our camera op, gets that, goes over to the bell ringing, and then to the Fanavision, and then we’re back to our cast. It’s like,‘Yeah. Thanks, man. That’s a great shot.’”  

“Abbott Elementary” is streaming on Hulu.