Abbott Elementary Director Randall Einhorn on Building the Show’s Mockumentary World

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After several seasons of Abbott Elementary, audiences know the school, its teachers and even many of the visual rhythms of its mockumentary format. But for director and executive producer Randall Einhorn, keeping that world familiar doesn’t mean shooting it the same way every time.

“For me, form follows function,” Einhorn says. “The stories of Abbott Elementary are what really informs why we shoot it the way we do.”

The mockumentary format gives Einhorn and the directing team plenty of opportunities to experiment. A familiar space like the teachers’ lounge might appear repeatedly, but every new story creates different relationships for the cameras to follow.

“We’re never doing anything the same way twice.”

That flexibility requires an enormous amount of planning, particularly when the show brings its full ensemble together. Einhorn creates detailed overhead diagrams mapping where the characters are standing, where they are looking and where each camera needs to be.

Unlike a traditional comedy, every camera also has to plausibly exist within the documentary crew’s world. The crew can’t suddenly capture an angle that would reveal another camera or contradict where the fictional documentarians are supposed to be standing.

“Without a plan, it’s just going to be mayhem,” he says. “There’s just too much to pay attention to.”

Whenever possible, Einhorn also prefers shooting multiple angles simultaneously. That allows the actors to stay engaged with one another throughout a scene instead of recreating a performance hours later for the reverse angle.

“Because they’re always on, they’re bringing it all the time. And it just infuses an energy that I think really comes across on camera.”

Einhorn has spent much of his career working within the mockumentary format, including on The Office, Parks and Recreation and Modern Family, but he sees Abbott Elementary as having its own distinct visual identity.

For him, much of that difference comes from how the show views its teachers.

“I wanted to portray all these people as heroes because I believe they are.”

That idea helped shape the warmth of Abbott itself. The school may be underfunded and its teachers underappreciated, but Einhorn wanted it to feel like a place audiences enjoy returning to and a community worth investing in.

“These people are doing something that’s very underpaid, completely underappreciated and incredibly important.”

As the show has expanded, maintaining that feeling has meant bringing Abbott’s visual language into increasingly ambitious settings. Relocating the school to an abandoned mall for several episodes felt almost like making a new pilot, with the team essentially building a new working school around characters audiences already knew.

The show’s talking-head interviews offer another opportunity to keep performances feeling spontaneous. Because Einhorn is behind the camera asking the questions, he can adjust how a character responds simply by changing the way he phrases the prompt.

Rather than directly asking an actor to make a line angrier or more emotional, he can subtly lead the character toward a different reaction.

“You see the performances change, and they’re just so much more nuanced.”

That relationship with the camera has developed over the course of the series too. For Einhorn, the characters aren’t simply looking into a lens. They have developed relationships with the people supposedly making the documentary, something that also exists between the real cast and crew.

“They’re not talking to a camera. They’re talking to a person.”

Some of the show’s biggest directing challenges have taken that established style far outside the school. Filming at a live Philadelphia Phillies game required one of Einhorn’s most elaborate plans yet, especially when the production had to capture scripted material while responding to whatever happened during the actual game.

The stadium turned out to be so loud that walkie-talkies became virtually useless, forcing Einhorn to physically move between camera operators and cast members to communicate directions.

Then there were the things nobody could plan, including Kyle Schwarber hitting four home runs.

The episode combined footage filmed across multiple days, with more than 70 whip pans helping connect the cast to the action on the field. That preparation allowed the episode to feel as though the characters were genuinely experiencing the game alongside thousands of fans.

“You can’t replicate that unless you’re doing it.”

Some of the best material came from letting the actors experience the game in real time. Einhorn points to Sheryl Lee Ralph’s reaction to one of Schwarber’s home runs as a moment where the line between performance and genuine fandom nearly disappeared.

“That was a real moment,” he says. “That’s the beauty of our cast. They just stay in it.”

For Einhorn, the complexity is part of the appeal. The baseball episode required more preparation than almost anything else he had directed on the series, but successfully pulling those pieces together made the challenge worthwhile.

“I kind of enjoy these things that have a high degree of difficulty because when they work, they come out really something special.”

That philosophy also informs Einhorn’s work as a producing director, where he helps other directors step into the show’s established visual language. Many have come from within the Abbott team itself, including writers, crew members and actors who already understand the characters and the world around them.

The goal isn’t to prevent directors from bringing their own ideas. It’s to make sure those ideas still feel possible within the documentary the series has been building from the beginning.

As Einhorn puts it, those limitations often create the most interesting opportunities.

“The harder it is, the better it is.”

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