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It’s not just Newport society balls that need to be perfectly on theme and planned to a T. The de rigeur grandeur and opulence of “The Gilded Age” is the result of months of planning, very careful maneuvering, and miles of fake marbling. But the visual language of the show has ever so slowly expanded over the HBO series’s three seasons to be larger and more dynamic. The trick to making “The Gilded Age” even more transporting, according to cinematographer Manuel Billeter, has been to enhance our perspective both outwards and inwards.

Billeter, who is also faculty and an alumnus at the New York Film Academy, has been behind the camera on “The Gilded Age” since Season 1. And he started out by using lens choices to follow the show’s demarcation between the “Old Money” Van Rhijns and the “New Money” Russells. Scenes where the former powered the story — usually,...

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Gilded Age” Season 3, Episode 8, “My Mind Is Made Up,” including the ending.]

It starts, as it often should, with Audra McDonald.

Her “Gilded Age” character, Dorothy Scott, is trying on a dress for the upcoming Newport ball — feeling quite pleased with her lovely embroidered roses — when her archenemy, Mrs. Kirkland (Phylicia Rashad), strides into the fitting room to ruin her day. All season, in fact, Mrs. Kirkland has made a habit of spoiling Dorothy’s fun. One might even say she savors it, and this day is no different.

The haughty mother of Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica) feigns surprise that Mrs. Scott and her daughter, Peggy (Denée Brown), are still attending the ball. By Mrs. Kirkland’s assessment (which is all that matters), the unmarried Scott should feel too ashamed for “duping” her son, Dr. Kirkland, to allow herself the pleasure of a fancy night out. “I had...