The Shape of Water
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DP Dan Laustsen on The Shape of Water, Judging Exposure without a Meter and Capturing Rich Blacks
There’s a line in Bob Dylan’s “Brownsville Girl” that goes, “(It’s) strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content.” Suffering together connected director Guillermo del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen on the set of 1997’s Mimic. The Miramax-produced giant insect creature feature marked the first American effort for del Toro and just the second studio gig for the Danish Laustsen. The experience was not a pleasant one. As del Toro put it during an on-stage interview at the BFI London Film Festival last October: “Two horrible things happened in the late ’90s: my father […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jan 4, 2018 -
On the Cut
On a film screen, a single edit flies by in the blink of an eye — usually, in 1/24th of a second. In the edit room, though, a cut is teased, strategized, finessed and obsessed over. We asked six editors from six of the fall’s best films to give us the frames on both sides of one particularly noteworthy cut — and to explain why these edits are so important. Call Me By Your Name Director: Luca Guadagnino Editor: Walter Fasano Fasano: Sensual. That’s the way I’d like to define our approach to the editing of Call Me By Your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 14, 2017 -
“We Wanted to Make it a Very Sexy Fish…”: Five Questions for The Shape of Water Director Guillermo Del Toro
If Guillermo Del Toro hasn’t already cemented his place as one of the great storytellers of today, he certainly has with his latest film The Shape of Water, a Cold War-era twisted fairy tale opening today. Sally Hawkins stars as a mute cleaning lady, Elisa, working at a government agency, whose only friends are her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her gay neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins). An imposing government agent Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrives with a mysterious amphibious creature in tow, played by Doug Jones. While Strickland is intent on studying the creature for whatever military value this research might […]
by Ariston Anderson on Nov 30, 2017
