American Cinematographer - August 2017 - 66

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Haunted House
As time slips
away, the ghost
suddenly finds
himself amid a
construction site
where his home
with M once
stood. He will
continue to
haunt this space
long into the
future - and far
into the past.

You've directed, and David's
notched credits as a cinematographer.
Do you feel those experiences elevated
the collaboration, or helped you find a
shared language?
Palermo: His shooting I can definitely speak to. He has very specific
shots in mind sometimes, but even then
there's so much collaboration. He's
never over your shoulder - 'I wanted it
like this.' It's always, 'How can I improve
on it? What can I do to make this really
sing?' It's fantastic because he knows
exactly what he wants and he knows
when it's right; if I made a recommendation for a shot, he would know immediately whether that shot was valuable to
him. He and I both are also very avid
film watchers, and as a result we had a
shorthand.
I'm astounded by his ability to
edit. It's one of the things that I admire
the most about him. When I see the
way he used stuff out of context and
what you can get away with in an edit,
it's incredible. The ghost looked over his
left shoulder; you can't really tell what
the background is, so David would put
it in this scene - it didn't matter if it
was a totally different room, different
66

August 2017

time of day. I'm always surprised by the
way you can divorce footage of its original intent.
Probably his biggest asset is his
general placidness. He will say that he
feels like the world is crashing down on
him when he's making a movie, but he
gives off a calm that really trickles down.
And it also trickles down from his
producers. That really sets a mood:
nothing's a disaster; there are no real
fires here; we're all making a movie, and
what a blessing it is to be doing that.
And as a result, as you
mentioned earlier, the movie has a real
calmness to it - even as the ghost
becomes increasingly untethered and
time slips by at an accelerating rate.
Palermo: That was the thing that
I was so touched by in the movie. The
script so perfectly nailed that, and it kind
of does away with the feeling that we
need to have a legacy at all. It's so at
peace with our position in this world.
When I first started making things I
was really concerned with how they're
perceived, how I'm perceived through
them, what they look like in the long
run. As I've become more comfortable
with myself or more comfortable with
American Cinematographer

the work I'm putting out there, I just
want to make things for the sake of
making them; I want to make them for
the process.
This film's process was one of the
best I've ever had. I've made some great
friends and had a great time making
them. The fact that there is this movie at
the end of the process that I like is
another aspect of it, and I do like that it's
going to live on, and that it's this document of a time in our lives when we all
got together in Dallas, in the sweltering
heat, and put an Oscar-winning actor in
a sheet. Not to get all philosophical
about it, but that's ultimately the beauty
of this film to me.
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TECHNICAL SPECS
1.33:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Mini, Alexa Classic EV;
Red Weapon 6K
Panavision Super Speed,
Ultra Speed, Primo Zoom

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