American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 84

Filmmakers' Forum

The Magic of Hard Lighting
By M. David Mullen, ASC

The Love Witch follows the romantic misadventures of Elaine
(Samantha Robinson), who uses witchcraft in her pursuit of men,
sometimes with fatal results. It could be described as a drama with
thriller and horror elements. Though set in modern times in a small
town in Northern California, the style is thoroughly old-fashioned,
using visual aesthetics from the classic studio era of Hollywood.
I first met director Anna Biller when we were students at
CalArts in the early 1990s. We shared a love of old three-strip Technicolor movies and I shot a 16mm short film for her in that style. Biller
is truly someone I would call a "total" filmmaker - not only writing
and directing, but designing, building and painting her sets,
constructing props, sewing costumes, plus editing and scoring the
movie.
She asked me to shoot her latest feature in a retro style reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's color movies, in particular The Birds and
Marnie (both photographed by Robert Burks, ASC), which are also
tales that center around a glamorous but troubled woman arriving in
a new town. Other references were British horror films like Horror
Hotel and Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and some 1960s Elizabeth
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December 2016

Taylor melodramas. Though soft lighting had crept into movies
around that period - even Marnie has some semi-soft lighting at
times - we stuck to more of a hard-lit 1950s approach. Color and
glamour are Biller's particular visual obsessions, and the hard key-light
approach emphasizes both.
Biller has always been an advocate for shooting and finishing
on film, even when we were back at CalArts and many students used
video for convenience and cost reasons. She insisted on using 35mm
for this project and wanted to finish photochemically. This meant
shooting in standard 4-perf 35mm so that we could make a contact
print for release. We composed for 1.85:1 using an Arricam ST from
Otto Nemenz.
Today, one's choice in color-negative stock is limited to the four
types made by Kodak, and the single Kodak Vision 2383 print stock.
Even though standard 35mm Eastmancolor movies of the 1950s
have a somewhat coarse grain structure, Biller told me that she
wasn't interested in replicating any sort of grainy look, so in my mind,
we were aiming for the smoother look of past three-strip Technicolor
or VistaVision movies. I decided to shoot most of the production on
Kodak Vision3 200T 5213 stock, but rated at 100 ASA in order to get
very high printer-light values, which in turn would give the print a rich
look with deeper blacks and stronger color saturation. A few scenes

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by Steve Dietl, courtesy of Oscilloscope.

Elaine
(Samantha
Robinson)
uses
witchcraft in
her pursuit of
men,
sometimes
with fatal
results, in the
retro thriller
The Love
Witch.

American Cinematographer - December 2016

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