American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 38

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A New Testament

Red Epic Dragon cameras were used to capture exterior plates for visual effects, which were
later composited into position outside the stage-bound set's windows.

drawing the set that it would be quite
the task to light and move around in, but
we were able to incorporate his lighting
needs into the design of every room."
Messina and his department
constructed the house in two forms.
"We struggled with how one set could
accommodate the naturalistic beginning
of the film and also work for all the
lighting and staging changes that follow
in the third act," the production designer
notes. "What we settled on - and this
was a big deal for a modestly budgeted
film - was to build two house sets. We
built one in a [remote] field [outside
Montreal], mainly for the beginning of
the film, where we shot mostly during
the day; this [set featured] the entire first
floor and part of the central staircase.
Then, on stage [in Montreal], we built a
two-story set to accommodate the night
38

November 2017

work, practical effects and stunts that
take place during the latter parts of the
film - this was the set that essentially
gets destroyed. It's to Matty's credit that
the two tie together so seamlessly."
In one of the first shots of the
film, the camera follows Mother as she
gets out of bed, exits the bedroom,
walks into the study, then goes downstairs to the kitchen. The camera stops
in the atrium at the foot of the stairs and
rotates with her as she walks from the
kitchen to the pantry, the dining room,
the foyer and finally the front door.
"The whole purpose of that shot is to
meet Mother and establish the geography of the house," Libatique remarks.
Thanks to the Brooklyn-based
rehearsal process, Messina notes, "I was
able to incorporate certain door openings and furniture placements to
American Cinematographer

accommodate the camera moves. There
was a lot of discussion about how the
camera would move up and down the
narrow staircase while keeping the
frame on Jen; we opted to widen it a bit
from the initial design, and we had
sections of railing that were removable.
We would also pull elements such as
kitchen cabinetry into the wall or fold
down counters in the middle of a shot to
accommodate the moving camera. That
was really fun, trying to solve that as
simply and elegantly as possible."
The filmmakers' rigorous specificity extended to the film's color palette,
which Libatique says was designed to
convey Mother's natural persona.
"When she goes down into the basement and opens up the trunk filled with
linens," he notes, "you get the whole
tonality - layers of gray, blue, tan.
That's the house. You even see it in the
spackle she chooses when she's working
on the bedroom wall."
"Especially at the beginning of
the film," Messina adds, "it was
absolutely necessary that we strike a
naturalistic tone with both the color
palette and the lighting. We needed a
relatable tonal baseline from which we
could vault into the insanity that's to
follow."
Libatique's photography sustains
the naturalistic mood throughout the
first two acts, then becomes increasingly
heightened in the third, as the story
grows ever more surreal. "We wanted to
earn the things you see in the film," says
the cinematographer. "Nothing photographically should take you out of the
reality of the situation."
Constructing the first floor on
location was critical to this approach, as
Aronofsky wanted the real world to
always be visible through the house's
wide-open windows. "Featuring the
landscape was very important," Messina
attests. "We even chose to forego any
artwork on the walls so the verdant
green of this idyllic field, framed by the
huge windows, would be what would
break the pale color tones of the house
and costumes."
Because the camera would see

American Cinematographer - November 2017

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