American Cinematographer - March 2016 - 20

Production Slate

Conjuring a Coven
By Mark Dillon

The Witch transports us to 1630s New England, where Puritan
settlers live in perilous conditions and abject fear of the supernatural
- particularly witches, whom they believe to be everyday folk transformed by a deal with the Devil.
Following an ideological clash with the church, William (Ralph
Ineson), Katherine (Kate Dickie) and their five children are cast out of
their colony. The staunchly pious family travels to the edge of a dark
forest, and the group is soon beset by misfortune. The parents'
newborn son and then their eldest, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), disappear - both while under the watch of eldest daughter Thomasin
(Anya Taylor-Joy), whom the parents come to suspect of witchcraft.
Tragedy and paranoia soon begin to tear the family apart.
Director of photography Jarin Blaschke collaborated with firsttime feature writer-director Robert Eggers in painstakingly re-creating
the period. The 2015 Sundance Film Festival jury took note, honoring
Eggers with its U.S. Dramatic Directing Award.
Blaschke had previously shot Eggers' short-film adaptation of
Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart - which, like The Witch, displays
the director's fondness for American Gothic - as well as Brothers,
which similarly explores the dread of the unknown in the woods.
Blaschke spent his early years in Northern California and the
desert town of Bend, Ore., before studying film at New York's School
of Visual Arts. He cut his teeth shooting Columbia University graduate
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March 2016

films. His first feature was director Anthony Tarsitano's middle-age
drama Calling It Quits, followed by Geoff Ryan's post-war Fray,
Macdara Vallely's mother-daughter tale Babygirl, and Leah Meyerhoff's experimental coming-of-age story I Believe in Unicorns.
Like many of his peers, Blaschke cites the late Gordon Willis,
ASC as a prime influence. "I connect with how he did things simply
and well, in terms of distilled coverage and the purity of his lighting,"
Blaschke says from his Los Angeles home. As evidenced in The
Witch's artfully spare aesthetic, he notes that he prefers "pure thinking, and doing things in a direct, effective way - not trying to adorn
it with too much stuff."
Blaschke met New Hampshire native Eggers when the director
was searching for a local cinematographer in his adopted New York.
Eggers was impressed with Blaschke's reel, and the pair bonded over
discussions about animators the Brothers Quay and Golden Age illustrators such as Harry Clarke and Arthur Rackham.
"Those fairytale illustrators come through in the imagery in
The Witch," says Eggers in a separate interview. "They're in our
blood." The director also acknowledges the influence of Stanley
Kubrick's The Shining, shot by John Alcott, BSC. Indeed, camerawork
in The Witch is occasionally Kubrickian, with static frames and the
subtle, unsettling use of zoom lenses.
The Witch also shares Kubrick's preferred 1.66:1 aspect ratio,
but Eggers says that's mere coincidence. "We wanted to be really intimate in the family's house, but also have the trees be extra tall," he
explains. "Also, the taller frame gave us more resolution and a little

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by Rafy, courtesy of A24.

Forced into exile
in 1630s New
England, a
staunchly
religious family
begins to
suspect their
daughter
Thomasin (Anya
Taylor-Joy) of
practicing black
magic when her
brothers
disappear in the
nearby woods in
the feature The
Witch.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2016