For the film crew of Insidious: Chapter 3, the latest installment of the successful horror franchise, capturing darkness, framing vibrant and bloodcurdling demons, and beholding the flame is all in a day’s work.
The Insidious series, a few in a recent wave of current films tapping into timeless cinematic qualities most often associated with classic, gore-free psychological fright fests, consistently surpasses viewer expectation via hair-raising visuals, creative ingenuity, heart-pounding jump scares, and standard tools of the trade: tried-and-true lighting and camera units.
Although Chapter 3 occasionally does benefit from various computer-graphic designs and visual effects (namely green-screen technology and translite), the flick derives much of its eeriness from the filmmaker’s willingness to play in virtual complete darkness, ushering audiences along on a return trip through the deep cyan-green and nearly pitch-black netherworld of ghouls known as The Further.
There’s something strangely beautiful, but also quite sinister and chilling, about the abyss that writer/first-time director Leigh Whannell and cinematographer Brian Pearson conjure for this picture, especially when a beacon, like a lantern or a lit candle, is introduced into the shadowy frame. Balancing light and dark was one of the major challenges facing Pearson.
“If you’re shooting in near darkness, it’s important to have something to anchor the eye, a highlight or something, to keep you from straining and searching through the murk for something to look at,” says Pearson, whose list of credits includes
Final Destination 5, White Noise 2: The Light, My Bloody Valentine (2009), Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry (with Nicolas Cage and Amber Heard), and the upcoming Steve Quale thriller, The Lake. “We used a doubled-up LEE 241 gel to create The Further world. When someone uses a lantern, for instance or some other light source, it created a contrasted range.”
Starring Stefanie Scott as the demonically disturbed Quinn and Dermot Mulroney, who portrays her shell-shocked dad,
Insidious: Chapter 3 is a prequel to the first two Insidious episodes, which raked in a combined worldwide gross of over $250 million, according to The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).
Despite its third turn at the dance, the series retains an ardent following and a sense of genuine creepiness, and introduces Michael Reid MacKay as the terrifying “Man Who Can’t Breathe,” a kind of visual complement to the now-iconic “Lipstick-Face
Demon” (Joseph Bishara) and “Bride in Black” (Tom Fitzpatrick), both of whom materialize for this film. In addition, Lin Shaye reprises her role as the endearing psychic Elise Rainier and Angus Sampson and Whannell reappear as supernatural sleuths Tucker and “Specs.”
PLSN caught up with Pearson, who was in Berlin, enjoying some rare downtime, before needing to “gear up for another project.”
PLSN: Let’s take an obvious question: How did you get the call for I:C3?
A friend of mine, John Leonetti, had done the previous Insidious movies with [director] James Wan and he had moved on to directing a film and was doing post-production. Since John was not available he put my name forward. [Leonetti] hadn’t read the script but he connected me with Leigh and Bailey Conway [a co-producer], and we proceeded from there, last summer. Leigh is both the inventor of the Insidious franchise and the writer of this particular film — and the director. He also acts in the film on the side, for fun. Technically, Leigh is a first-time director, but the most experienced first-time director I’ve ever met.
I think Leigh and I instantly connected with our enjoyment of the classics, not necessarily horror films. The early films of David Fincher, like Se7en, and a film like Blade Runner had come up in early discussions. Leigh was wonderfully collaborative. One of the first things we did, and I always love when I get a chance to do this, was that Leigh and I went to his house and we each brought ten movies and we took turns putting them in the Blue-ray player. We sat there for a couple of days and ordered food in and watched films like The Conjuring and [Stanley Kubrick’s] The Shining and talked on a wide range of topics, from composition to production design to paint color. We also looked at Blue Is the Warmest Color, which has wonderful camera work. You wouldn’t think you would look at Blue Is the Warmest Color as a reference for an Insidious film, but this is Leigh in a nutshell.
What kinds of information was Whannell communicating to you about what he was looking for as far as setting moods?
I think one of the touchstones for us was Se7en. In the film, there’s a scene in which Morgan Freeman comes over to Brad Pitt’s apartment and has dinner. It’s a very casual scene. We looked at the quality of lighting in there, how the light changes from cut to cut, the color of the walls, the ochre patinas, textures in the wall, the wardrobe, and how still the camera work really was. For Insidious, we had the luxury of designing a pretty large set for Quinn’s apartment, where her whole family lived. We built it from the ground up. Jennifer [Spence], who is the production designer, kind of sketched out some ideas and so did Leigh. Based on the requirements of the script, Jennifer came up with this wonderful plan that had lots of architectural details that dated to the 1950s or 1960s. Together, we kind of chose a paint that had the right shine, eggshell quality, and Jennifer was able to layer the walls with plaster. Then we talked about the mood of the lighting and how we didn’t want the whole film to be one note. Leigh and I sat down over a period of about a week or week and half and talked about what kind of things we needed to do. In a few days Leigh had, in his mind, shot the movie from cut to cut to cut. Certainly the scares were already designed in his mind. The funny thing is, we looked at [the shot list] only a couple of times for some specific things. When we went to the set, we would stick with this plan and watch the blocking, make adjustments.
What specific fixtures did you use to achieve certain specific looks?
The first thing we did was put the ARRI Alexa, the Sony F55 and the Red [EPIC] Dragon in a head-to-head test. We wanted to play in the dark, and I believe this is probably one of the darkest films I’d ever done. We wanted solid black and good color renditions that the Alexa and F55 provided. The Sony gave us a little bit of a higher ISO rating [light sensitivity], which was not really necessary, but was intriguing, in a way. Out of the box, the Sony F55, which was a camera I had not used on an entire project, gave us a slightly more even color basis and a slightly more de-saturated-across-the-board look that the Alexa didn’t. So, the Sony became the camera choice.
In terms of lighting, there are a few lighting products, the newer generation, that I’m a fan of. For the most part, I tend to use a standard tungsten and HMI package for daylight work. I’m a big fan of the jokers, the small 400 HMIs and the Chimeras. The Chimeras are a quick way to soften and yet control the light. They have light control grids in them that are fantastic these days. You can stick a Chimera in the corner and not have it take up very much room; it’s self-flagging, and I find those to be a great tool to tuck into places. We use J-Boxes for backlight. They are a large four-foot by one-foot long strip. It’s kind of like a strip bank Chimera, but it’s specifically made in Los Angeles for set work. We used those for backlight, because they have a control grid and relatively low profile, and have a few different dimmable bulbs. I’m a big fan of Kino Flo’s Celebrity — Celeb 200 and Celeb 400. I believe they’re fluorescent-based lights that have the ability to go from tungsten to daylight balance and to dim from zero to 100. You can knock them down to virtually zero and they won’t flicker. We used little LED strips that we tucked into corners and put on dimmers. Some of these items don’t always have the best color representation, but it’s difficult to resist the temptation to use something so small and flexible. We also used D-Lights, which are Wi-Fi-based LEDs, a hybrid LED, manufactured by Grounded Production Services in the Van Nuys [CA] area. They are controlled via iPad. You can dim them and change their color in real time while you’re shooting. It can be smooth and imperceptible.
How concerned were you about creating the correct mood for the demonic realm of The Further?
From the beginning, Leigh said he wanted this to be a very dark film. When he described scenes in Quinn’s bedroom, he said that there would be light in the room but that there’d be one wall that was pitch black. In other words, if someone had been standing there, you wouldn’t be able to see him. By “someone,” he means the demon [The Man Who Can’t Breathe] with light colored skin and a light colored gown, like a hospital gown. I said, “You want me to light [Quinn’s] room, except that there’s this area that falls into complete and utter blackness?” Pure solid black is one of the hardest things to achieve, given the sensors on digital cameras these days. That was really my challenge on this film. The dark space was a little corner right beside the window. To achieve the kind of darkness we wanted, it was a matter of doing a lot of flagging and covering parts of the set with Duvetyne that were bouncing light into that blackened area.
It appears you use actual candles as a light source in this movie. Were they tricky to shoot?
The Sony F55’s native ISO is 1280; it’s quite comfortable working in that range. Let me put it this way: it’s very hard with flicker units and lights to create a truly authentic candlelight look. We found that a custom-made two-wick candle actually produced a pretty good light level. We had the Panavision Primo lenses, which are T1.9. There are faster lenses out there, but those are the ones we had. We found that if we opened up those lenses wide and used these particular multi-wick candles, we achieved a reasonable exposure. I had prepared an overhead light, a kind of China ball, that could fill in a bit if the candle flickered. In the end, the candle actually produced enough light to get enough exposure. It was natural in the sense that when the actors leaned in toward it, they got brighter, and when they moved away from it, they got a bit darker. I also knew that Leigh wanted to do 360s [shots] around the candle, and there was something very neat and tidy about using a real candle, because it didn’t require you to hide any other lights anywhere. However, what wasn’t ideal was the wick. As the candle burned down, it would get longer, more visible, and the flame would tend to flicker. We would need to trim the wick and bring it back to the original length. You were really at the mercy of what the candle was doing at any given moment. Sometimes it flickered wildly, sometimes it was kind of calm and steady, and sometimes it was brighter or darker.
Did you learn anything, and what did you learn, on the set of Insidious: Chapter 3?
On every project, you learn how to work with crew, designers, and their teams. Every film builds on itself. As a cinematographer, hopefully, all the experiences I’ve had on films prior have made me faster, better, stronger and more able to do a good job in less time, which is the goal.
