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“Horror Films Have a Unique Ability to Tap into Deep Emotions”: DP Andreas Johannessen on Rabbit Trap
Dev Patel in Rabbit Trap In Rabbit Trap, a musician and her husband find their outsider status in a remote Wales town amplified when their music brings to the door an unnamed child who will stop at nothing to weasel into their lives. Shot on 35mm, debut English-language feature by director Bryn Chainey will play as part of the Midnights section at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Andreas Johannessen, who served as camera operator on The Worst Person in the World and has acted as cinematographer on music videos by Jenny Hval, among others, also makes his feature debut as DP. Below, he goes into detail about the decision to shoot on film, including one scene shot deep in a cave, and the influence of Andrei Tarkovsky and Ira Cohen.
See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Johannessen: I first met Bryn over a Zoom call that lasted about three hours, after the script was sent to me through my agent at Artistry. Later, I learned that Bryn and the producers at SpectreVision already had me on their radar after my profile appeared on their Instagram feed during their search.
For me, the best initial conversations with a director are always rooted in the characters and the script, allowing the story to shape our creative and technical decisions.
We really connected instantly using Bryn’s script as a foundation to explore themes of humanity, trauma, and relationships. We also connected over a shared vision of seamlessly blending the supernatural with reality, treating the mythology surrounding and consuming our characters as entirely honest and believable. I had worked on short-form projects in the horror genre and had been searching for a script that felt like the right creative journey.
I believe horror films have a unique ability to tap into deep emotions, as the audience is already a bit on the edge of their seats. This heightened state allows filmmakers to explore raw, vulnerable feelings in a powerful way.
Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this film, and how did you realize them? How did you want your cinematography to enhance the film’s storytelling and treatment of its characters?
Johannessen: My artistic approach always starts with the director’s vision. Bryn’s script stood out—it was highly audiovisual, blending a fascinating mythological world with an intimate look at a marriage and the lasting effects of buried trauma left unchecked.
It was crucial for our locations to be real, grounding the film’s supernatural elements in the vast landscape where this mythology originates. We shot entirely on location, including the deep, dark cave interiors—over half a kilometer into the mountain.
Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they be other films, or visual art, of photography, or something else?
Johannessen: Bryn; Lucie, our production designer; and myself got to do a fair bit of soft prep for this film. This gave us time to really explore references together. It was a bit of everything, looking into the works of filmmakers such as Tarkovsky (especially Mirror and Solaris), while also looking at artists from the ’70s like Ira Cohen.
Lucie, early on in prep, had a very expansive overview of the elements and references the scrip required, and getting to obsess with her for weeks over things like wall texture and how that would shape our interiors was truly wonderful.
The landscape was a huge inspiration. Early in prep, Bryn and I took a road trip for a week around Wales in his little green Mini Cooper, “Toad.” We explored the nature where this mythology originates, walking through different locations while discussing the script and our visual approach.
Bryn also has an extensive Blu-ray collection, and we spent several days and evenings watching films—both within the genre and beyond—as a way to spark ideas and refine our cinematic language in the early stages of prep.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals?
Johannessen: Rabbit Trap was an ambitious script to shoot on location within a 20-day schedule. Thanks to an incredible team effort—and a production and crew who truly believed in Bryn’s script—we made it possible. Thorough pre-production was key to maximizing our shoot-time on set.
Filmmaker: What camera did you shoot on? Why did you choose the camera that you did? What lenses did you use?
Johannessen: We shot on 2-perf 35mm, a wide aspect ratio with a slightly rougher grain structure, giving the landscapes a magical quality while enhancing the intimate scenes with our characters. The use of analogue synths and 1970s-era recording technology further inspired us to embrace analogue filmmaking.
With support from Kodak and Arri, we got to test properly in prep to refine the look. We chose Master Primes for their sharp yet organic feel, avoiding a clinical edge. During testing, I came across a couple of very unique lenses at Arri, built as a prototype for the DNA lenses. These were one-of-a-kind, never before used on 35mm. Once I saw the rich texture and character they brought to the image, I knew they would help transport our characters into the magical realm of faerie.
The camera movement is mostly restrained, allowing nature and sound to envelop the characters. As the story unfolds, deliberate shifts in the visual language and the cameras energy starts to mirror their emotional state. A key example is Darcy and Daphne’s psychedelic experience after listening to the faerie circle recording for the first time, inspired by Ira Cohen’s Mylar Chamber.
Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.
Johannessen: For the cottage interiors, it was really important that our main key light came through the windows, keeping the characters connected to the nature outside, almost like it was trying to push its way in. My gaffer, Ben, and I experimented with different materials—mylar and other reflective textures—to create subtle yet strange highlights and vibrations in the light. We wanted the daylight coming through the windows to feel pure and heightened. We mostly used HMIs, with tungsten units like the Mole Beam 10K adding a warmer, late-afternoon sun in some scenes.
For night interiors, we carefully planned practical lighting that fit the time period, with just a hint of light hitting the windows and curtains to keep the outside world alive. We mainly used tungsten for night scenes, with Skypanel LEDs in the windows tuned to a specific blue and a touch of green for extra depth as moonlight.
We shot on Kodak 200T and 500T, without filter correction, except in the third act, where we used 250D for the house transformation.
For exteriors, we relied almost entirely on natural light. I spent a lot of time during prep planning each setup around the best lighting conditions, revisiting locations to track how the light shifted throughout the day. This let us take full advantage of golden-hour sunsets and deep twilight. Of course, a bit of luck helped too; we were fortunate to get some incredible cloud formations and dramatic weather that added even more texture and atmosphere to the film.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to realize and why? And how did you do it?
Johannessen: One of the toughest shoot days was Darcy’s search for Daphne in the cave. Early on, this scene felt nearly impossible to pull off without the right location. We finally found a cave in Yorkshire—a 500-meter tunnel with incredible natural details that felt made for the film.
Shooting there was a challenge. No signal for intercoms or walkies, moving larger lighting units and gear in tight spaces with ceilings as low as 130cm and minimal rigging time to light the pitch-black environment. We worked our way from the deepest point back to the entrance—all in a single day. Arriving at the entrance again, after being submerged in the dark and echo-filled cave for 12 hrs, was such a payoff.
Everyone stayed focused and pulled off one of the craziest days of the shoot. Huge thanks to my gaffer Ben Manwaring, key grip Dan Lake, and 1ACs Ralph Messer and Sindri Týr Högnason. At one point, Ben was even rigging lights into ceiling cracks in the cave using his personal climbing gear.
Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI?
Johannessen: Shooting on 35mm was a big decision in terms of setting the look. We really opted for our colors and contrast to be strongly baked into the negative. My colorist on this film was my long-time collaborator Nicke Cantarelli. In our early conversations we explored bleach bypass, mesmerized by what it did to skin tones. Our problem for this film was the amount of vividness lost in the colors by the silver retain. During testing, I was able to provide Nicke with an exposure that gave him a dense enough negative with a suitable contrast ratio, processed normally, allowing us in the DI to pursue our “bleach bypass-skin tones” while still having the colors and saturation needed to portray our landscapes. This took some trial and error but was one of my best experiences ever in the DI. Nicke truly gave so much to this project with his dedication and eye for detail.
TECH BOX
Film Title: Rabbit Trap
Camera: Arricam LT
Lenses: Master Primes, Arri T-type 58mm, Arri A-Type 21mm
Lighting: Panalux UK
Processing: Cinelab UK
Color Grading: Nicke Cantarelli
