Cinematography Style: Jarin Blaschke

INTRODUCTION

From the stark, black-and-white nightmares of The Lighthouse to the desaturated, painterly frames of The Witch, DP Jarin Blaschke has carved out a career, often in the horror genre, by creating visually strong, graphic, desaturated, textured, yet naturalistic photography.

In this episode of Cinematography Style, we’ll peel back the layers of Blaschke’s craft to uncover how he broke into the industry, the techniques, inspirations, and philosophies that define his work and what gear he uses to execute these ideas. 

BACKGROUND

He first became interested in crafting images as a teenager. At 16 he moved to New York to study cinematography at the School Of Visual Arts. After graduating with a reel of student films he gradually began establishing a network of contacts and eventually became the go-to DP for many Columbia film school grad shorts - as they didn’t have a cinematography department.

Short film directed by Robert Eggers.

“You start with horrible shorts and then they become marginally better. Then they end up being things that actually go to festivals. Then I did my first feature and you start over again with no money. I didn’t have any strategy at all other than ‘I’m just going to meet as many directors as possible’. Eventually one of them has to be pretty good and take me along.”

One of the directors who approached him to shoot a short film in 2007 was Robert Eggers - who he would form a long running collaborative relationship with which would span many feature length projects.

Feature Film directed by Robert Eggers.

Although he has photographed some comedic and drama films, much of his work has included elements of horror - whether that be with Eggers or other directors such as M. Night Shyamalan. 

PHILOSOPHY

Cinematographers often talk about the craft needing a balance of technical skills and creative skills, however Blaschke also talks about needing a political skillset. This may be useful for selecting and managing crew, interacting with the client and agency on commercials, and also for managing a partnership with the director.

“There’s the political and then there’s the technical and then there’s the creative. They all sort of change depending on the situation you’re in. So sometimes it requires more of one than the other. Sometimes it’s more of a political task. How do you get a sense of what the director intends and trying to make my piece work among the rest because it’s such a rich multidisciplinary medium.”

For certain directors who he has a very close working relationship with, such as Eggers, he finds he has a bit more scope to push for ideas or make contributions beyond the usual scope of a DP. For example, making suggestions about changing the sequence of characters’ actions in a scene and how they are blocked.

It helps that he approaches filmmaking almost as an editor would, considering things like the sound and the timing when designing the shots - taking a large picture view of the scene, rather than just focusing on the photographic details.

This helps him to visualise stories by removing the clutter of the outside world and distilling the essence of scenes into succinct visual ideas. When designing the sequence of shots that they’ll photograph, Blaschke and Eggers each come up with their own shot list or storyboard, which they’ll then combine and through discussion come up with a final shooting plan.

“I don’t come from cinema. Jarin is better at camera placement than I am - he just is. I shot list everything, he shot lists everything and then we come together.” - Robert Eggers

These compositions are often quite symmetrical and centre weighted with the subject placed in the middle of the frame, without any extreme negative space which is found in many contemporary films. Rather their compositions are reminiscent of Renaissance art. 

The director DP duo also share certain perfectionist tendencies. These mean that they really narrow down the look and feel during pre-production, leaving less to chance, from the costume to the hair, to how they will achieve the dust effects.  

Since Robert Eggers films tend to be period movies, another point of collaboration is their communal desire for historical accuracy and authenticity. When they embarked on Nosferatu, rather than basing the visuals on the 1920s original, their intention was instead to be true to the 1830s Romanticism period the story took place in. 

For ex-production designer Eggers, a large part of his focus is on the costume and mise-en-scene, while Blaschke’s historical focus is on lighting. 

He likes to design his illumination for interiors or night scenes around practical lighting - which are sources of illumination that can be seen in the shot or are built into the set. For example, if the characters are exploring a space by torch light or even by the flame of a lighter he’ll give them a practical torch to use and let the real light from that illuminate the set, letting the rest of the space fall into darkness, true to how the human eye would see things. 

In many night scenes from period films he’s exclusively lit them with the natural light from candles, fires or torches. Although if the fire sources aren’t bright enough to expose with he may supplement them with either flame bars - which are gas powered torches which produce a continuous and predictable flame. Sometimes bringing in either a mirror or a textile to reflect and increase these fire sources.

He’ll occasionally resort to artificial electrical help. Such as if he needs to fill in a bit more light for candlelit night scenes - which he did with a small tungsten source bounced off muslin. He’s also used electric film lights to produce effects which aren’t possible to do with real sources. For example, on The Northman he used LED Skypanel 360 sources which were dug into the ground with a dialled in effect setting that produced the feeling of lava shifting and bubbling in a volcano.

GEAR

A standout feature of Blaschke’s cinematography is his frequent use of a limited monochromatic colour palette. Whether that be the black and white monochrome found in The Lighthouse or the desaturated, cool, cyan moonlight look in The Northman and Nosferatu. 

The idea behind this look came from his preference for naturalism. In coming up with an approach for lighting these night exteriors, he wanted to depict it as close to how the human eye perceives real moonlight.

This is informed by a scientific principle called the Purkinje effect. At low illumination levels, like night exteriors without artificial lighting, our eyes shift colour towards the blue end of the colour spectrum, and any red colours appear darker.

To emulate this feeling on The Northman and Nosferatu he used a cyan filter which was custom built for him by Schneider - that eliminated red and yellow wavelengths of light as well as most green light. 

This left him with an almost monochromatic image made of blue and cyan densities. Once the colour of this negative was desaturated in post, most of the colour drained out, leaving a low key cyan look.

For exteriors he’ll often combine this lighting with haze - which gives a bit more substance to the mid tones and prevents the whole image from crushing to black.

Most of his work has quite a distinctive look applied in the colour grade - motivated by his lighting. He’ll often opt for a desaturated, cool look for day scenes - with blues and greens seeping into the skin tone. 

Then either light interior or night scenes with the cool moonlight look we discussed, or lean into a warm, practical source, like lamps, candles or fire. His negatives are quite dense with crisp, pure black shadows. 

Each scene in the films he lights will usually have quite a limited colour palette that is either cool or warm and is punctuated by deep dark shadows.

You may think that working with so many moonlit night exteriors he’d opt for a digital cinema camera which comes with a more sensitive ISO base, and lets him expose with less light. Although he did do this on some movies, such as The Witch - which was shot on the Arri Alexa with its 800 base ISO - for most of his recent work he’s shot on less sensitive film stocks.  

“Since The Lighthouse everything I’ve shot has been on film. I like having a lightmeter and I like the repeatability of ‘You know, for this movie my fill light is going to be at this level for night scenes and this level for day scenes’. Sort of having, I guess, a formula, but one that’s tailored to the movie.”

He’s used different stocks on different projects, from the black and white Eastman Double-X on The Lighthouse, which he exposed between 50 and 80ASA, the 50D and 250D stocks on The Northman or the 500T film that he shot at 320ASA on Nosferatu.

Shooting at such a low ASA, compared to digital cameras, means that he needs to let lots of light into the camera - particularly when shooting night scenes. 

He uses large HMIs as his moon source which are suspended high up and far away on a crane lift positioned directly behind the character, opposite the camera, to backlight actors. 

The key to his moonlight look is placing his source a great distance away from the subject. Using strong sources far away illuminates vast areas of land in wide shots and creates dark shadows with hard edges like moonlight does.

To create cool sources of moonlight or daylight coming into interiors his team will rig large textile bounces on frames above windows, which may need to be raised by crane lifts, and bounce light from high output HMIs into them - which softens it.    

Using low ASA film and so much light means he really has to trust his light meter readings since the set in real life will appear much brighter to the eye than what the film recorded by the camera will look like. 

“The way I was filtering it, and I was also pulling it a little bit in the processing, just to get a little more latitude out of it. So, we’re talking about 10 to 12 times more light than a digital camera. On a modern set that feels like a lot of light.”

Another tool he uses to aid exposure for night scenes lit by practical sources like candles, is using lenses with a fast aperture. Such as using a Panavision Super Speed 50mm T/1.4, or even the Ultra Speed Panavision optics capable of opening up to T/1.

These specialty lenses supplement a set of regular speed primes - which often have a vintage heritage - such as the Cooke Speed Panchros with their dreamy textured bokeh, or his favourite set of Bausch & Lomb Baltar lenses designed in the 1930s which he favours for their cool tones and the way they bloom the highlights and soften the image.

Most of his films stick to quite classical camera movement which is buttery smooth, foregoing handheld motion. He’ll regularly push the camera along a straight axis - such as tracking directly backwards, forwards or along a horizontal axis from side to side.

Most of these moves are either done on a dolly, or if the moves need to be done over rough, uneven terrain, on water or from an elevated angle, he’ll use a crane arm with a 3-axis remote head - which gives the motion a smooth stability or places the camera in difficult to access positions.

For example, he’s used a 50’ Technocrane arm to suspend the camera just above the water line of the ocean without submerging it. Or a Scorpio 45’ Telescopic crane rigged onto a ship to position and move the camera with a stable, smooth motion.