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“All the Delicate Layers Gently Rose to the Surface”: DP Daisy Zhou on Bunnylovr
Still from Bunnylovr. Courtesy of Sundance Institute. In Bunnylovr, a Chinese American cam girl tries to reconnect with her father while managing a deteriorating relationship with one of her clients. The film, part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, is director Katarina Zhu directorial feature debut.
Handling cinematographer duties is Daisy Zhou (The African Desperate, Suicide by Sunlight). Below, she rattles off a number of influences and goes into detail about her camera selection and approach to lighting.
See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Zhou: I was recommended by a couple of mutual friends with director Katarina Zhu. We connected immediately. I resonated really deeply with the script, and we also shared many personal experiences and similar taste in films. It felt like the perfect partnership.
Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this film, and how did you realize them? How did you want your cinematography to enhance the film’s storytelling and treatment of its characters?
Zhou: I was inspired by the main character Rebecca, played by Katarina herself. I immediately felt the honesty of her character, someone that contained so much emotion, yet it’s all somehow hidden by a gentle gauze. I wanted the visual language of the film to capture the character’s grace, her sensuality, her loneliness; it all had to work together as a cohesive language, which was embodied in our unified approach. Shooting mostly handheld in long takes, the camera embodied patience and longing. Nothing needed to be overt; nothing needed to be hammered in; all the delicate layers of the film gently rose to the surface and said everything it needed to without saying anything at all.
Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they be other films, or visual art, of photography, or something else?
Zhou: Rinko Kawauchi, John Kacere, Nan Goldin, Daido Moriyama, the films of Andrea Arnold, Helen Van Meene, Takashi Homma, Lee Friedlander nudes, the films of Alice Rohrwacher.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals?
Zhou: We had a very low budget and only 15 shooting days. However, we made it through with the greatest team of filmmakers ever assembled. I am truly honored, grateful, thankful to be part of such a generous, joyful, talented group of people for Bunnylovr.
Filmmaker: What camera did you shoot on? Why did you choose the camera that you did? What lenses did you use?
Zhou: We shot on the Sony Venice 2 on Panavision Ultra Speeds. When Katarina and I discussed the look for this project, we kept going back to images that evoked softness, intimacy and honesty, but with an edge of loneliness and surreality. I wanted vintage spherical lenses that had those qualities, and working with Panavision meant that I could work closely with the techs to find the exact detail in quality I was looking for. The character of the screen, for instance, played a huge role visually in the film. I wanted lenses that could capture the subtle presence of a screen light, a lens that was sensitive enough to capture the haunting presence of a screen light through a flare. I love the digital textures that are inherent in Sony Venice cameras.
Because Katarina was both directing and acting in her first feature film, Sony’s Rialto mode allowed me to be light and nimble, not only to move freely with the actor and react to every impulse, but to do very long handheld takes, so the actors eventually lose the sense of the camera. The Rialto allowed me to stay in the take, be in the space with the actors in real time, without pausing the momentum by stopping and resetting.
Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.
Zhou: Lighting is akin to painting. It’s about creating layers. My approach to lighting has always felt like a simple conversation between our environment and our intention. We didn’t have the ability to uproot and relight each scene, so the approach needed to be more observant. Which parts of the environment feel authentic? Which practicals do we leave? How much do we tweak? The key to every scene was subtlety, respecting the space and defining the details.
I like to mix and shape and articulate with a lot of specificity to the scene. My gaffer Chelsea Soby was perfect for a job like this. She is an incredibly thoughtful and considerate artist and was able to remember all of the little nuances that make this film special. It wasn’t about having all the big units on this one; it was about crafting the 2-3 units we did have, being sensitive to all the layers of colors that existed in this universe. We had a small selection of units that felt a little hobbled together, a mixture of led and tungsten lights, always small and always very specific and thoughtful. We didn’t need more or less. It was perfect.
Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI?
Zhou: Knowing that our post timeline was extremely tight, it was important that we establish the look in the LUT creation process. My colorist Josh Bohoskey and I worked on our lens test footage and created 4-5 looks that were contenders for this project, which all had the same characteristics with different subtle variations in black levels, saturation and texture. I came onto the first day of shooting already knowing that I had the film in one of these looks. One of these luts felt right, pretty immediately. When it came to the color correcting process, we were able to speed through the film and only make minor tweaks.
TECH BOX
Film Title: Bunnylovr
Camera: Sony Venice 2:
Lenses: Panavision Ultraspeeds
Lighting: Kinoflo + Astera
Color Grading: Josh Bohoskey of Rare Medium
