Director Jan De Bont, ASC and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK blow the roof off The Haunting.
“I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster... and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.”
— the anxiety-stricken Nell, upon entering Hill House.
Ghostly tales have long been a favorite subject for cinemato-graphers, given the obvious opportunities for inventive lighting and camerawork. Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novella The Haunting of Hill House was first adapted for the 1963 film The Haunting . Directed by Robert Wise and shot by Davis Boulton, BSC, it still stands as one of the finest examples of fright cinema (see historical article beginning on page 82). However, today’s filmmakers couldn’t resist revisiting Jackson’s original tale in order to seriously spook modern moviegoers.
This new incarnation centers on Dr. Jeffrey Marrow (Liam Neeson), who seeks to prove the existence of ghosts by selecting Hill House, an eerie New England mansion with a lurid history, for a unique experiment. His unwitting subjects are Luke (Owen Wilson), Theo (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Nell (Lili Taylor), who falsely believe that they’ll be participating in an insomnia study. Each is soon affected by the demonic dwelling’s anthropomorphic aura of evil, personified by its former master, the long-dead Hugh Crain (Charles Gunning).
Director Jan De Bont, ASC—the ace cinematographer who broke into directing with the kinetic thrillers Speed and Twister—stresses that his new Haunting is not a remake of Wise’s 1963 film. "There were many things they could not do at the time for technical reasons," De Bont explains. "That prompted the filmmakers to take a more ’suggestive’ approach, in that the ghosts were never seen, but heard. The use of sound and suspense in that film is excellent, but we wanted to work more closely with Shirley Jackson’s story, which is more graphic. While we are still leaving many things up to the audience’s imagination, we are also suggesting things more specifically by depicting certain details."
Supernatural Shooting Style
Filming began in November of 1998 at the Raleigh Studios complex in Manhattan Beach, California, and then moved to a continuous series of enormous Hill House interiors built within the cavernous "Spruce Goose" domed hangar in Long Beach. Finally, exterior work depicting the mansion and its grounds was done at Belvoir Castle and Harlaxton Manor in England.
Caleb Deschanel, ASC was the film’s original director of photography, but he and De Bont decided to part ways after the first week of shooting. Deschanel went on to shoot the period drama Anna and the King on location in Thailand, and Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK took his place on The Haunting. Lindenlaub recounts, "After getting the initial call on a Sunday, I immediately went in to meet with Jan, look at the footage Caleb had shot, and inspect the sets. I began shooting the following Tuesday."
Given virtually no prep time, Lindenlaub relied on his previous experiences in lighting large sets—on such films as Stargate and Independence Day (see AC July 1996)— to plan a strategy for the vast, ornate Hill House interiors, which were devised by production designer Eugenio Zanetti (What Dreams May Come). Lindenlaub, a native of Hamburg, Germany, has also shot the features Universal Soldier, Last of the Dogmen, Up Close and Personal(AC April ’96), Rob Roy, The Jackal and Red Corner.
After signing on for The Haunting, Lindenlaub brought in gaffer Dino Parks, rigging gaffer Brian Lukas and key grip Loren Corl. However, several members of the original crew stayed with the production. The cameraman reports, "Caleb’s gaffer and key grip overlapped for a few weeks to help us get going, which I thought was very noble. I also inherited the A-camera/Steadicam operator, Scott Sakamoto, and the first assistant, Jamie Barber—which was wonderful, because they were supportive and gave me a good start in building a dialogue with Jan."
Though both the old and new versions of The Haunting were shot in Panavision anamorphic, De Bont’s update bears little photographic resemblance to its predecessor. Asked if he discussed the 1963 film with De Bont, Lindenlaub recalls, "Jan thought it had aged a bit in terms of the visual look, and therefore would not be such a great reference. Also, because this new film is not a remake, we both wanted it to be different in terms of the lighting and camerawork."
The filmmakers did draw inspiration from another ghostly classic of the same era: The Innocents (1961), which was shot by Freddie Francis, BSC. Lindenlaub offers, "It was beautifully photographed in black-and-white anamorphic, and has amazing depth of field. They lit everything very hard, shooting at T11, so they didn’t often have to use diopters. We couldn’t do that today, because of the way we use soft light.
"I later spoke to Freddie Francis’s operator on that film, Ronnie Taylor [BSC], who was our B-camera operator when we shot our exteriors in England. He explained how Freddie had used graduated filters on both sides of the frame to keep the walls dark, and how the actors even wore sunglasses between takes!
"Like the original Haunting, what’s great about The Innocents is that there are so many things we don’t see, perhaps because they are happening only in a character’s mind, which creates suspense. However, it has a more classical photographic style, so it hasn’t dated in the same way."
With little time to plan his lighting scheme, Lindenlaub instinctively determined that the film needed a naturalistic approach in order to make its fantastic story seem more believable. He explains, "The Hill House sets were very baroque and operatic, so having young contemporary characters walking though them was already such a strong, dramatic starting point that we didn’t need expressionistic lighting. There are no thunderstorm or lightning effects in the film either. It’s not Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion."
Shadows and darkness were definitely going to be key components in the film’s visual plan, but strong daylight sources were also important in order to create emotional contrast in certain scenes. "We didn’t want the audience to feel as if they had been sucked into two hours of darkness," Lindenlaub remarks. "Psychologically, people don’t like to be in the dark, and 120 minutes of darkness can become depressing to watch. Also, the impact of any extreme lighting effect will wear off after a certain point. For example, if an entire film is shot with green-tinted lighting, the effect may seem imposing at first, but the eye will adapt, and after a while the audience won’t even see the green anymore. The same thing happens with light and dark. If there is no alternation between light and dark, there is no relief, so the dramatic tension of being in the dark is gone."
Lindenlaub’s lighting approach was greatly impacted by De Bont’s shooting style. "When setting up a shot, Jan always starts with the camera," the cinematographer details. "Unlike some other directors, Jan likes to work by looking through the eyepiece and seeing the shot. He totally believes in the dynamic of camera movement and the setup; he feels that those elements are more important than ’perfect’ lighting. But Jan knows what’s practical, and he doesn’t start with abstract ideas that cannot be achieved. If he wants a particular shot, he will get that shot, no matter what it takes."
Lindenlaub says that operator Scott Sakamoto helped make this approach work: "Scott is a great operator because he’s patient and willing to try things, and Jan also has a lot of respect for Scott."
De Bont prefers to work with stand-ins while he is setting up shots so he can completely develop his ideas about the angles and blocking through the camera before bringing in the actors. Lindenlaub says, "Because of that, it was better to let Jan decide which lens and camera setup he’d like to use for any given shot, although we had some different ideas about lens selection. For example, he likes using wide-angles for close-ups, while I prefer a longer lens. That’s just my personal preference, though; a lot of cinematographers use wide lenses to great effect.—
"Because Jan had such a clear idea of what he wanted, we didn’t have the type of vacuum that normally exists between the director and the camera department. The cinematographer usually fills that gap, but given Jan’s background, it didn’t exist on this picture. I didn’t have to help him in terms of visualizing the film, and Scott was there to help Jan achieve what he wanted with the camera, so I could concentrate on the lighting.
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