In 2013, Steven Soderbergh announced that he would be taking a step back and retiring from the spotlight of Hollywood film directing. But since his exodus to "retirement", Soderbergh has been anything but quiet directing a Broadway play (The Library), editing and re-cutting his own movie reinterpretations (Psychos and Heaven's Gate: The Butcher's Cut), even writing and tweeting an entire novella (Glue) 140 characters at a time. In an interview with Vulture, Soderbergh dangled another carrot in front of his fans and followers, saying "I'd do a TV series if something great were to come along."

And it hasn't taken him long to find the series to make his mark on. In August, Cinemax premiered The Knick, a raw and graphic medical drama fictionalizing the struggles and advancements made at the Knickerbocker Hospital (or "Knick") in New York around the turn of the 20th century. In an interview with Fast Company, Soderbergh described his vision and goals for the series.

"My goal was to, in a way, make you forget that it was a period piece. At least in the sense of how it sounded, how it felt, how it looked, I wanted to somehow have the viewer feel, oh, their sensation of New York in 1900 is like our sensation of New York now; that's how it felt to them."

"I wanted it to feel like it was happening right now. I wanted the aesthetic to be participatory. It's not an approach you identify with a period film."

The ten episode series was shot on the EPIC DRAGON, taking advantage of the DRAGON sensor's superior low-light sensitivity to create a unique, visceral and raw aesthetic that is reminiscent of a bustling pre-electric metropolis. Soderbergh describes the EPIC DRAGON as "super sensitive," and says,

"There wasn't a lot of augmentation (lighting). Every once in a while an actor would walk onto the set and say 'Are you guys bringing any light in?' and we'd go, 'No, that's it.'"

Soderbergh also tells Fast Company that they discovered one particular phenomenon in post-production, that was caused by the unusually natural light.

"Looking at closeups, Soderbergh said he was plagued by the weird undefined sensation that something was different, until he figured out he was unused to seeing his actors' pupils so large."

Check out the full article by Fast Company, or visit www.cinemax.com to see what critics are calling "sublimely addictive," and "vibrant, dark, and above all alluring."