New York. LA. New York. LA. When friends ask me which of the two metropolises I dig the most, I usually comment on how they breed different brands of hustling – both of which I’m encouraged by. So it was natural that when I began talking about the fresh New York-centric HBO series How To Make It In America (Sundays on HBO at 10pm), comparisons to its glossier Hollywood-based predecessor Entourage would arise.

While the two series deal with similar themes of brotherhood, partying and industry-climbing, each does so with its own swagger – and I’m willing to raise a glass to them both!

Prior to America’s premiere, I asked its lead actor Bryan Greenberg (Ben) and creator/exec. producer Ian Edelman a couple questions about the show’s ambitious title and playful cinematography. In return, they dropped some fun insight about the series’ unorthodox shooting process! Here’s a transcript from our phone call:

Given the show’s locale and focus, why did you decide to go with a title as broad as How To Make It In America instead of How To Make It In New York or In Fashion?

Bryan Greenberg: Ian, you wrote it.

Ian Edelman: I think the show’s bigger than fashion. I think there’s an ensemble cast. I think certainly Ben and Cam are fashion for now, but Luis Guzman, the character Rene, has aspirations in the world of the energy drink. And like both characters, Rachel is a designer, but she represents small business and the creative working class. So I think if you kind of take a step back, it’s a bigger American pastiche.

Can you speak about your decision to use stills to create informative but comedic flashbacks throughout the series?

Ian: The use of still photography was the brain child of Julian Farino, who is a brilliant director. And it was about giving the show another dimension and adding to the realism. The more we used stills, the happier we were with them.

We worked with this incredible photographer named Boogie. He came from Serbia and had already taken crazy images. When he came to New York, he started taking pictures of drug dealers that were so arresting.

He has this great ability, he’s fast, he’s like a nimble photographer, he’s on his toes all the time, and he just has this ability to capture the sort of truth with these characters.

If we were shooting at a flea market, he can go to a flea market, communicate with people and capture real the sort of essence of these characters, and great portraiture, and establishing shots for us. So Boogie, is a photographer, and he was a great asset.

Bryan: Yes, the show covers so many different characters and so many different scenes, and you only have a half hour to do it. So you can tell a lot with just a picture. And I think it’s really the aesthetic of the show.

It’s almost like you’re flipping through a magazine, right, and you’re like OK, here’s a shot of sneakers, here’s a shot of Hasidic Jews. It gives you a flavor, and you’re in right away without any sort of explanation or backstory, it kind of just tells the story for you.

Ian: Ben and Cam come from a culture where more than ever, people are photographing themselves on social networking sites, on blogs. The genesis of the idea kind of grew out of that and then became a greater narrative tool for us to use.

Bryan: Yes, and that’s all Julian. I mean in the second episode, it opens up with this party scene that we had, and we shot the whole thing on iPhones and Blackberries, and I’ve never heard of anything like that, I thought that was the coolest idea, I mean because it just seemed so real and current.

Ian: It felt really real, and then the set was unique, because you didn’t really need any lights. The crew was so small, that it upped the authenticity and it made the moment somehow bigger.

Unfortunately the DP who was shooting on his iPhone, somehow like he lost all of his footage, but luckily Bryan was there with his iPhone too to fill in the gaps.