Phil Abraham started out as Mad Men's Director of Photography (and won an Emmy last month for outstanding cinematography for the pilot). Now he's one of the show's directors.

Q: We've learned a lot about Duck Phillips in the two episodes you directed this season. Are there any challenges to telling his story?

A: It's nice to be in a position with scripts where we learn more about a character, as opposed to just alluding to who this guy is. Here we scratch deeper than the surface with Duck, and you feel like you're working with a cleaner slate, which is fun. Obviously, as clean a slate as you have, you're still working off a script, but there's room for creating the character in a fresh way. And you want to get it right: You want to feel like you're serving the material well, and you're also dealing with a performance that really is new in terms of what it's revealing. When you have John Slattery or Jon Hamm, their characters are pretty well-established so you know exactly where you're going to go. But with a character like Duck, you're really discovering all this stuff for the first time and peering in on his inner demons, so you do have a little bit more of a responsibility to make sure you're getting the tone of that correct.

Q: What was it like working with Chauncey the dog in "Maidenform"?

A: Chauncey came out so much better than we had really thought he would. He's a great dog, but whenever you try to plan a scene with a dog -- you want him to be here and then you want him to move over there, and it's almost asking too much. It's those little things where if you're trying to get a dog to do something very specific, it's difficult. You've got to be very keenly aware of what you can and cannot use. There was a scene where Don comes into Duck's office and they sit down and have a conversation -- it was scripted that Chauncey was going to come up on the sofa and just rest his head on Duck's lap or if not come up on the sofa, then just sidle up next to him and rest his head on his lap. Matt really wanted that to happen, to show it as a sign of weakness for Duck. But we just couldn't make it happen, and the actors were doing such a great job with the scene, I wasn't going to let Chauncey dictate the parameters of that scene.

Q: In "Maidenform," when Duck kicks Chauncey out on the street, what were your ideas beforehand?

A: I had a sense of how I wanted it to play out, and I thought that I would be more on Duck's face when he unleashed Chauncey at the door. So he brings him up to the door, and I thought they would share their moment there. At least that's the way I pictured it. But then when we rehearsed it, that part happened so quickly. He's just at the door, unhooks him, boom, out. When I saw it, I realized, "I can't break that moment up because that's giving it too much weight." So I thought it's so much better to be on Mark [Moses] on his exit leaving Chauncey. It was important to me that I be on Mark in a medium close-up as I dollied back with him as he makes his way back through the lobby after having ditched Chauncey and doesn't turn back at all. He is completely devoid of emotion, very singular of purpose.

Q: At the end of "The Jet Set," Don identifies himself on the phone as Dick Whitman. What were your thoughts on that moment?

A: We shot the scene in the living room of this house in Palm Springs. Don is a stranger in a strange land, and he is even now a stranger to us and who's he talking to? The whole thing is so cloaked in mystery. I don't know if I shot it in any kind of deliberate way because the words say so much. I liked the idea of ending it there because I had a shot where I pull back from behind him where you just see him sitting on the sofa in that Don Draper pose where his arm is extended, like in the Mad Men logo -- except in the logo it's his right arm and in this it was his left arm.