Nosferatu - Robert Eggers - Jarin Blaschke DP

[Tiago Almança]

https://theasc.com/videos/clubhouse-conversations-nosferatu

[Robert Houllahan]

Just saw it today.

Thought it was great and very entertaining loved the cast and the look is fantastic.

 

[Stephen Perera]

.....award this man an ASC or whatever it is haha!!!...nominated for an Oscar for The Lighthouse in 2020 but lost to the 'one take' gimmick film of 1917 that was great (but Gallipoli by Peter Weir, shot by Russell Boyd was better film)...surely this one should be nominated for best Cinematography and win it this time round....let's see what happens.

[Jarin Blaschke]

On 12/31/2024 at 1:39 PM, Stephen Perera said:

By the way this film is a masterclass for how to shoot low light with film…..

@Jarin Blaschke could you talk us through how you created this scene in particular….my favourite set up of the whole film! Wow

 

 

 

Well thank you. The ‘moonlight’ work in the film, including the frame you reference,  may not be truly “low light” in 2024 terms. It was shot at T2.8 at ISO 200 (after our “Mesopic” filter factor) and with a 1/2 stop push. The hard back/top light is set at -2 incident, the soft top light is -3.7 incident and the front fill is -4 to -4.3 incident. This under exposure level still lights the set at 12 foot candles, which is bright to the eye when you’re shooting at night. Lighting ratios set for low exposure also look very flat to the eye, so testing is definitely necessary!

[Jarin Blaschke]

Hard moon: two 18ks at two different depths in the highest lifts possible (80 ft height? 120 ft?) -2

 

Top Skylight: LED sausage shape balloon between camera and subject. It just squeezed in between the branches above. -3.5 to -3.7 if memory serves

 

Fill light: 2.5ks mounded into Molton-covered 20x20 ultrabounce. Behind camera far enough to hide foreground/background falloff. -4 on average, brighter for closer shots.

[Stephen Perera]

I'm absolutely nobody to comment on the hardware used for the lighting...others will surely comment, but the moonlight crossroads scene with the duotone vibe I insist is the shot of the film.....I'm going to watch it again in another cinema and see if the proyector bulb makes it look different or not!! I think this film needs a fresh proyector bulb at the cinema to see the nuances of what you have shot haha...actually was that a concern at all @Jarin Blaschke do you 'fear' a Game of Thrones "it's too dark" backlash at all from it going onto crappy cinema screens?

Edited January 6 by Stephen Perera

[charles pappas]

I’m curious know if there wasn’t a great deal of  - perhaps a tremendous amount of - cgi/green screen used in this movie, because if there wasn’t, I will need to re-calibrate the way I look at movies. (I appreciate that the scene of the path to the castle, for one example, is the equivalent of matte painting; that’s fine).

To expand on this a bit, i’m thinking of Orlack’s castle as compared to the beast’s castle in the 1978 Czech version of Beauty and the Beast (Jural Herz). The 1978 Beauty and the Beast castle is clearly all “real" whereas Orlack castle set might as well be all green  screen for as much as we can see of it. 

 

[Petr Kvapil]

Were all the exterior night scenes shot at night? I read somewhere that some were filmed in the daytime, but I couldn't find anything about it anywhere else, so I guess that's nonsense?

[Uli Meyer]

16 hours ago, Stephen Perera said:

I think this film needs a fresh proyector bulb at the cinema to see the nuances

Our local cinema runs their projector bulbs at 80% or less so they have to replace less often. It really puts you off going to the cinema.

Edited Tuesday at 08:49 AM by Uli Meyer

[Jarin Blaschke]

On 1/6/2025 at 8:11 PM, Petr Kvapil said:

Were all the exterior night scenes shot at night? I read somewhere that some were filmed in the daytime, but I couldn't find anything about it anywhere else, so I guess that's nonsense?

Yes. At night. I would experiment with day for night in a location that has almost guaranteed clear sunshine (like the Mojave), but in my opinion overcast light makes terrible day for night. 

[Tyler Fukuda]

On 1/6/2025 at 6:28 AM, Jarin Blaschke said:

Well thank you. The ‘moonlight’ work in the film, including the frame you reference,  may not be truly “low light” in 2024 terms. It was shot at T2.8 at ISO 200 (after our “Mesopic” filter factor) and with a 1/2 stop push. The hard back/top light is set at -2 incident, the soft top light is -3.7 incident and the front fill is -4 to -4.3 incident. This under exposure level still lights the set at 12 foot candles, which is bright to the eye when you’re shooting at night. Lighting ratios set for low exposure also look very flat to the eye, so testing is definitely necessary!

Hey Jarin, thank you for taking the time to answer some of the questions being asked. To clarify for some about exposure readings, when you give numbers like “-2” and “-4”, you are talking about stops of light under your target stop (2.8) correct?

Secondly, when you have a scene that big where you’re essentially lighting an entire set or maybe a street, especially one that is on film, what’s been your working method to test whether or not the scene is going to come out the way you want it for final picture if you don’t have the lighting units or any resources required to achieve a shot like that. It’s certainly gorgeous and would love to know what that process of testing is like for you.

Thank you again for your time.

[Daniel Klockenkemper]

I caught a screening a couple nights ago.  The lighting was very well done as others have noted, but I also felt that the camera movements were exceptionally well conceived and executed - often seamlessly changing from motivated to unmotivated (and sometimes back to motivated, and even unmotivated again).  Can you comment about how these were planned and realized?

Also, I noticed that in shallow-focus situations your focus puller went for the subject's far eye most of the time.  Is this a general/personal preference, or a particular decision for this project?