Nach Objektiven, Artikeln und Hilfe suchen
Reluctantly, 17-year-old Gretchen leaves her American home to live with her father, who has just moved into a resort in the German Alps with his new family. Arriving at their future residence, they are greeted by Mr. König, her father’s boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen’s mute half-sister Alma. Something doesn’t seem right in this tranquil vacation paradise. Gretchen is plagued by strange noises and bloody visions until she discovers a shocking secret that also concerns her own family.
This is horror/mystery film ‘Cuckoo’, directed by Tilman Singer and shot by cinematographer Paul Faltz on Kodak 35mm 500T and 250D stocks with Cooke’s Anamorphic /i S35 primes and 35-140mm Anamorphic Zoom. Faltz has always been interested in film and photography – as a teenager he started developing photos in his basement. He admits that although most of them were overexposed or underexposed and out of focus, the fascination has remained to this day.
‘Cuckoo’ marks Faltz’s second feature with director Singer and their fourth collaboration overall. All these projects have been shot on film which Faltz feels suits their filmmaking style along with bringing a warmth and text that he feels digital can’t fully achieve.
“Working with Tilmans is very collaborative and enjoyable for me as a DP. He is a very visual storyteller, even in the script stage. Over the last few films, we have developed a common visual language on how to tell the story. We do a lot of experimenting, and we try to come up with interesting ways to tell the story.”
“We tried to create an imaginary time and place that felt very familiar, but at the same time eerie and frightening. The same goes for the look of the film. We took a lot of inspiration from the previous generations of (horror) filmmakers to create a feeling of familiarity without it being out of date.”
Faltz had shot with Cooke lenses before, but this was his first time using the anamorphics. Prep work and testing included looking at a variety of anamorphic glass as well as looking at the behaviour of different colours of light in relation to one another and in relation to costume and makeup. Also looking at how the film and lenses handled extreme lighting situations which would prove to be invaluable once shooting began especially with the higher contrast style that was to be employed.
“On one day of shooting we really had to fight the weather. The location was a bungalow with glass facades on 3 sides. Basically, an aquarium. Within one scene we had weather conditions from sunshine to thunderstorms. The good contrast rendition of the lenses really helped us here. We were able to continue shooting, mixing harsh backlighting with black stormy skies”
“Shadows are a prominent theme in Cuckoo. Who is hiding in the shadows or who is casting the shadow. That means we wanted a very high contrast in the picture. Hard light sources in the image and large dark areas. The Cooke lenses did a great job of reproducing these hard contrasts. The edges of the lamps are given a wonderful softness without brightening up the whole picture.”
Faltz was continually impressed by the Cooke lenses finding them to be incredibly supportive towards his cinematographic approach.
“The optics are full of character. You can feel the optical elements working in the image as the focus changes. All the things you want from vintage lenses, but with the advantage that these are modern lenses, with all the benefits they bring to the shooting process. I was extremely impressed with the look of the 25mm and 32mm. I knew we wanted to shoot a lot of wide angles. You can physically get super close to the characters with the camera without the actors‘ faces getting distorted.”
From testing to final post, Faltz sings the praises of colourists Dirk Meier and Jonas Damm in helping to define how the film would look and feel.
‘Cuckoo’ then promises to be an atmospheric and visually outstanding horror trip with an original plot and perfidious twists. The film features EUPHORIA’s star Hunter Schafer alongside a brilliant and terrifying Dan Stevens. NEON is releasing the film on August 9 in the United States and Universal Pictures will release it in the United Kingdom on August 23.
