From Doctor Sleep to Crawl: The Cinematography Behind 8 of 2019’s Most Eye-Popping Horror Films

Roman Osin on Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

The Approach: Warm and disarming, juxtaposed against unnerving darkness

How They Did It: We carefully identified a suitable color palette and tried to limit blues and greens in the costumes, sets, and locations so the warm and earth tones would have more emphasis. We looked at the colorful works of William Eggleston and the darker, “emptier” existentialist images of Gregory Crewdson, among others. Though Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is set in 1968, we also drew influences from those wonderful youth films of the ’80s, where loss of innocence played a big role: the movies of John Hughes, Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, and many Amblin Entertainment productions. Then, we shot many scenes darkly and moodily. “Layers upon layers of darkness” was our mantra, to create a rich contrast and draw the audience into that place they don’t wanna go, and yet they long to… the world of fear and suspense.

The Old Is New: With camera and lighting, we strove to go against type of ’60s cinema. Although we shot traditional anamorphic and chose solid camera moves and controlled framing with minimal handheld, we also wanted to tell the story of that period in a modern way, for a current, highly film- language- and media-savvy audience. This included shooting digitally, using elegant CG enhancements for our monsters, Steadicam and drone photography, a softer lighting style, and reaching for “the darkness”— something that digital is appropriate for.

The Takeaway: It pays to have a great second unit team. You can’t have too many days of that.

Tech Box

Shooting days: 44
Camera: Alexa Mini
Lenses: ARRI Master Anamorphic Primes. Lighting: HMIs, tungstens, LEDs, hardlights (Fresnels), soft lights, Kino Flos, soft boxes, bounced light, dimmable LEDs
Picture post/DI: Technicolor Toronto/ Doug Wilkinson

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