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Shutter Angles
Conversations with DPs, directors and below-the-line crew by Matt Mulcahey
Practical Magic: DP Aaron McLisky on Bring Her Back
Billy Barratt in Bring Her Back In A24’s Bring Her Back, a grieving mother (Sally Hawkins) takes a pair of orphaned siblings into her secluded home with nefarious ulterior motives. It’s another slice of southern Australian horror steeped in trauma and grief from Talk to Me twins Mark and Danny Philippou, infused with ample gore and unsettling dental carnage.
The brothers’ sophomore directorial effort reteams them with Talk to Me cinematographer Aaron McLisky, who spoke to Filmmaker about their latest venture on the eve of its theatrical release.
Filmmaker: I saw Talk to Me in the theater when it came out and loved it, but I didn’t know anything about the Philippou brothers. I only found out they started as YouTubers under the name RackaRacka after seeing Bring Her Back. Their videos are incredibly inventive and they were quite adept at stunt work and practical effects even then, but my first thought was, “These are the guys who make incredibly emotionally raw horror films?” How did you first cross paths with the brothers for Talk to Me and at what point in the process did you sense that these guys were the real deal?
McLisky: I was working in the drama space and looking for my next project. I’d been working a lot in television and doing various commercials, music videos and short films and whatnot in between. I was working on a TV series called Mr Inbetween and one of the cast members told me, “I just read for this indie Aussie horror that Causeway Films is doing.” That was the first time I heard about [Talk to Me]. I had been following Causeway Films [the Australian production company behind The Babadook], because I loved what they were doing with horror films and other kinds of independent cinema. I had actually spoken to Causeway for a previous production and unfortunately they went with somebody else, but I was interested in what they were doing next. So, my agent was reaching out to Causeway to see if there was anything coming up and then serendipitously through Instagram I got a DM from Danny [Philippou] saying, “Hey, we’re looking at DPs and I love this short film that you shot. I’d love to talk to you about a project.” That’s when I realized it was that same Causeway project.
I didn’t really know that much about RackaRacka, but I’d skimmed through Danny’s Instagram and gone, “Holy crap, these guys are pretty insane.” After he reached out. I went into a deeper dive of their YouTube channel, saw all the amazing stuff they’d done and learned that they had this huge following from these homegrown movies that had this incredible scale with stunts and effects. They were clearly very talented sort of backyard filmmakers, but I was like, “How are they going to pull off this horror project with Causeway?” I spoke with producer Sam Jennings, and we had a really beautiful conversation about how [the brothers] had written this script and Causeway had received it and developed it with the boys. They really believed that it had a unique voice. When I read the script, I agreed. There was an element of risk, a bit of a gamble, but their commitment and positive energy was so refreshing. I was working on a Russell Crowe film at the time that got shut down during COVID and was looking at doing pickups for that, and the dates were starting to conflict with Talk to Me, but I decided to go with Talk to Me and never looked back. It’s been an awesome partnership, and I hope to work on all their projects from here on out.
Filmmaker: You had a unique and extended preproduction period on Talk to Me because of COVID.
McLisky: When I landed in Adelaide for prep, we were all quarantined in a hotel. We weren’t sure if we were actually moving forward with the project, whether we could get actors in, whether it was even viable to make the film. But in the couple of weeks that we were stuck, we dove into preproduction. We were watching movies together and using our iPhones [to shoot previs], because that is [the brothers’] bread and butter. They’re constantly picking up cameras and making things. We were able to come up with interesting visual approaches to sequences, experimenting with different shot ideas, looking at references and sharing. We realized that the extra time you normally don’t get in prep was the secret to our creative process. When we got into production we had a very tight schedule and the budget was rather small, but because we’d spent all this time together shooting little sequences and editing them, it made the film so much better. We took that same philosophy and applied it to Bring Her Back as well.
Filmmaker: You shot Alexa Mini LF again on Bring Her Back. Did you go with the Zeiss Supreme Primes again as well?
McLisky: The boys don’t like to repeat themselves. They brought a bunch of references to me and one of the big ones was the “psycho biddy” movies, three-hander domestic psychological dramas like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? I decided that it would be interesting if we utilized lensing to distinguish the different perspectives and ended up using three different lens sets to do that. We discovered in our early camera tests that there was a motif of circles. During our testing we were looking at the Petzvals, which are rehoused Russian lenses, and when you went wide open on them the bokeh became this really interesting circular effect that would fall off behind the center of the image. That became the lens we utilized for Laura’s character [played by Hawkins]. Piper [played by Sora Wong] is blind and we wanted her lenses to have a lot more aberrations and fall off, and to be slightly more abstract. So, we went with the Moviecams, which are lenses that Arri rehoused. When looked at wide open, they have this really beautiful effect and halation. For [Piper’s brother] Billy, we wanted a slightly clearer image. We went with the Arri DNAs because we found they still had a magical, beautiful quality to them that was in the same world as the Moviecams, but with a slightly cleaner image.
Filmmaker: When a scene had both Billy and Piper, were you literally swapping out the lens sets for the different coverage?
McLisky: Yeah, though sometimes we would have to be less dogmatic about the rules. If for some reason a lens length wasn’t working or there was an issue, we would usually default to the DNAs, but for the most part anytime a scene was dominated by Billy’s perspective or Piper’s perspective, it would be that character’s lenses.
Filmmaker: Did you extend that differentiating any further—different filters, LUTs or focal lengths for each character—or were the different lens sets enough?
McLisky: We never wanted it to be too stylized or to feel this overt change in lenses, so the characteristics of the lenses were enough. We went down the path of looking at different LUTs or preferencing certain focal lengths, and I think for the boys they felt that it was getting too prescriptive. They appreciated the different lenses for the different characters as a beautiful little nuance, but never wanted anything to feel forced or that everything wasn’t still in the same world.
Filmmaker: You also switched up aspect ratios from Talk to Me, moving from 2.39 to 2.0.
McLisky: Originally, we were looking at 1.37 for Bring Her Back. We wanted a taller frame because a lot of the psycho biddy movies were 1.37. We were also looking at Ingmar Bergman films and how he did closeups. We landed on 2:1 but also framed slightly taller as we were shooting, because there was something really beautiful about the taller frame. When we started shooting in the house, because it’s such a strong character, we did start to feel like the aspect ratio wasn’t closing in enough in the way that we wanted it to, so there’s a couple of moments where the aspect ratio opens up.
Filmmaker: How much of Laura’s house is practical and what did you build on stage?
McLisky: We looked all over Adelaide to try and find the perfect location. The brief from the boys was that there needed to be a central pool, because there’s a traumatic event that is the instigator for why Laura is trying to conduct this ritual. For Danny it was very important for every room in the house to see the pool, so we needed to find a house that wrapped around the pool. The shape of that pool was also really important, and he wanted the house to shelter the pool so it becomes like a tomb in a way.Every location we found only ot us 50% of the way there or maybe had a couple of rooms that worked. We did find a house that did most of the job, only it didn’t have enough rooms. So, our production designer Vanessa Cerne decided that she was going to build the second level of the house on stage, and we would print backdrops and do translights. The thing about the boys is they respond to reality. The studio space is something that’s not comfortable for them. It’s not a space that they love, because they love to be able to respond to things that change to light [in a real location]. They’re big on doing it for real, but Vanessa convinced us that it would be a good idea, and we’d get a lot more control, if we split the movie. So, basically all the rooms upstairs are on stage and all the rooms downstairs are on location.
Filmmaker: Did production install the pool? It’s such an odd triangular shape.
McLisky: We originally started looking for circular pools, and we did find a couple of houses that might’ve worked [otherwise] and were just going to build the pool. But when we walked into the location [we ultimately used] with that triangle pool, Danny fell in love with its unique shape. He also thought it might be a little bit too obvious that there’s a circle pool. He loved the idea of instead just re-tiling the triangle pool so that you can see the circle [pattern in the tile at the pool’s center].
Filmmaker: For the glimpses we see of the resurrection ritual on Laura’s VHS tape, did you shoot those on the LF and degrade it, or did you actually shoot it on some sort of period camera?
McLisky: Danny and Michael are big on practical effects. We had two special effects teams working on this movie. We had big special effects rain rigs and then all of the prosthetic work. Everything was as real as possible. There are minimal amounts of VFX in the film and I think that’s something that Danny and Michael are really proud of. They want to keep it real. So, basically everything [for the ritual footage] was done in-camera. We ended up on Mini DV just because we found this particular camera that Danny really liked after we tested a bunch. Danny actually shot most of that stuff himself. Sometimes he gave the camera to the actors. I was there basically just lighting the scene. We shot all of that VHS stuff at two different locations. We shot the opening ritual in an abandoned warehouse, then went back and reshot the whole sequence again after the shoot. It was done as pickups. We designed a whole ritual because we felt like the audience wanted to see more of it, so we re-shot the ritual on the LF and shot more on Mini DV. Danny took [the footage] and put it through an analog effects thing where he re-recorded it onto a tape, then they basically played the tape through a VHS machine and rerecorded the image. There’s no VFX for all that ritual stuff.
Filmmaker: Here’s the test of how crazy you went with doing things practically. There’s a bird’s eye view of Laura’s house where it’s revealed that the entire property is surrounded by a giant circle of white paint. Was that painted practically or added by VFX?
McLisky: That was a tricky shot. Yes, art department did lay down as much white paint as they could, but then VFX completed the circle. We also needed some [VFX cleanup]. I had to put a crane in the yard to get lighting rigs up and the production trucks had been parked there. So, for that bird’s eye view VFX had to clean up the landscape of some of those areas.
Filmmaker: [SPOILERS FOLLOW] We talked earlier about using different lenses for different perspectives, but we didn’t touch on Oliver, another of Laura’s foster children.
McLisky: Oliver’s perspective isn’t seen that much throughout the film, but there are a couple of times. Danny wanted this idea that Oliver is a boy that’s trapped under a spell as part of this ritual and has one goal, which is to consume Piper. So, what would Oliver be looking at and why? This idea of slow zooms became this interesting perspective choice that we wanted to use every time Oliver was staring at Piper. He’s zeroing in on his target. We were [initially] fighting against zooms. Danny isn’t a big fan of them, but I was like, “Well, we’ve gone down this path of trying to define perspective and give each character a lens. What would Oliver’s perspective be?” And Danny was like, “Well, if anything, it would be a zoom, because there’s a demon inside this boy and he purely wants to consume this girl.” I tested a bunch of zooms, and the Arri Signature Zooms were by far the most superior. They have such a clean image and are very beautifully made lenses.
