Cinematographer Dan Laustsen on Crafting ‘Frankenstein’ With Guillermo del Toro: “We’re Not Afraid of the Darkness”

Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating Frankenstein finally reached audiences this fall, premiering in Venice in August before bowing globally on Netflix on Nov. 7. It’s the fifth collaboration between del Toro and Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen, a partnership that began on Mimic (1997) nearly 30 years ago and has included Crimson Peak (2015), The Shape of Water (2017), and Nightmare Alley (2021). “It was just like coming back to a brother,” Laustsen says of reuniting with the director after long gap between Mimic and Crimson Peak. “We have the same feeling about light, about colors. We’re not afraid of the darkness.”

Del Toro had been talking about making his Frankenstein for decades. But it wasn’t until Nightmare Alley that the project took firm shape. When Laustsen finally read the script, del Toro’s take on the monster classic surprised him. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is a very, very special twist.’ For me, it’s a movie about love and forgiveness. It’s a love story. Not a horror movie.”

Visually, del Toro and Laustsen built the film around a stylized contrast of “amber and steel blue,” with moody single-source lighting and sweeping camera moves across Tamara Deverell’s cavernous sets. Laustsen insisted on shooting the entire production on the Alexa 65 — including all Steadicam work — for what he calls a “much more beautiful image.” That choice, combined with wide-angle Thalia Leica lenses, allowed the film’s signature deep-focus staging: “We can start with a big wide shot… and then end up in a close-up in the same shot. It’s like shooting 70mm in the old days.”

In keeping with del Toro’s preference for in-camera craft, Frankenstein relied heavily on physical builds and practical effects. “There’s not one scene shot on blue screen,” Laustsen notes. Miniatures were used for the castle explosion and collapsing laboratory; the ship was built full-scale on a gimbal; and torchlight remained entirely real. Even the creation sequence — a complex blend of sunset, rain, smoke and lightning — was engineered practically. Designing it, he admits, “was a challenge,” but “in the movie, obviously, it looks pretty okay.”

Laustsen spoke with The Hollywood Reporter at this year’s Camerimage festival about developing the film’s palette, working entirely on large-format, and why he and del Toro still prefer doing everything for real.

Guillermo del Toro has been thinking about making Frankenstein for a long time. When did he first mention it to you?

I think it was on Mimic (1997) He said, “You know, this is my dream project.” But that was with another studio. He was a young dude, and he didn’t know what the future was going to give him.

We did Mimic, and then we didn’t do anything together for like 15 years. Our calendars just weren’t matching. And then I did 1864, a big Danish television show. And I had a two week hiatus and he called out of the blue he called me and said: “Come to Toronto. I want to show you something.” I hadn’t seen him for 15 years, and it was just like coming back to a brother. He asked me to do Crimson Peak, which was an amazing movie. It died, I don’t know why. It just disappeared, but I love the movie. I think it’s a fantastic, good-looking movie, and it’s a good story.

And then we did The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. And he was talking about Frankenstein. By Nightmare Alley he was talking about it a lot that it would be his next movie.

So I read the book, which is amazing. And then I got the screenplay, and I was like, “Oh, this is a very, very special twist.” Which shouldn’t be surprising, because Guillermo does that all the time. I think the way he changed the story really makes it a masterpiece. For me, it’s a movie about love and forgiveness. It’s a love story. Not a horror movie.

Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein in “Frankenstein” directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

What was your first discussions you had about how you wanted the film to look?

We talked about the color palette, the amber and steel blue. Guillermo does these kinds of mood boards for each scene. He makes a sketch of the scene, and he’s color-correcting that. It’s a guideline for everybody: for costumes, makeup, hair, and myself, the cinematographer. So we are starting on the same level. But I’ve worked together with him so many times, so we have the same feeling about light, about colors. We’re not afraid of the darkness. We like single-source lighting. We like things going into the darkness.

When we shot Nightmare Alley, we shot half the movie on the Alexa 65, and then when we shot all the Steadicam shots, that was on an Alexa LF, because the Steadicam could not carry the 65. But this time, I wanted to do the whole movie on the 65, because I think it’s a much more beautiful image, especially as we’re shooting large format. So I spoke to my Steadicam operator James [Frater, and asked] if we could carry the 65. He did a couple of adjustments to his rig and we shot the whole movie on 65, and we shot the whole movie on Thalia Leica lenses that can cover the 65.

What was behind that decision to shoot pretty much the whole film in wide-angle?

We just like the drama of it. When we are shooting wide angles, you’re coming into the action, you’re not standing back. We like to go in there, in the Orson Welles way, coming into the action, into the drama. And because the camera is moving so much, we can start with a big wide shot, seeing those amazing sets Tamara [Deverell] with Kate’s [Hawley] costumes coming in from everywhere. It’s really, really beautiful, and then we end up in a close-up in the same shot. Without distortion. Because you’re using such a large sensor. It’s like shooting 70mm in the old days. Like Lawrence of Arabia. Your negative is so big, so the wide angle is a 24mm, for example. But that’s not a super wide angle. So in the close-ups, we can carry that all the way in, and that’s getting much more dynamic and organic.

The backside of that is the Thalia lenses are very, very sharp, and that’s too sharp sometimes for the female skin tones. So we shoot with a diffusion filter inside the camera. Like in the old days, when you’d put a nylon stocking in front of the lens. We put a diffusion filter behind the lens so we wouldn’t get a filter flare. We have a lot of flares in Frankenstein, because we are shooting out to the sun all the time. We have this idea that the first time the creature sees the world is like he’s seeing the sunrise. We’re shooting into the sun all the time. So we get a lens flare, but not a filter flare.

Mia Goth as Elizabeth in Frankenstein.

Ken Woroner/Netflix

Did you have any cinematic touchstones for the look? There are obviously a thousand other Frankenstein movies out there.

No, no other films but we looked at some Caravaggio paintings.

For the single-source lighting?

Yes, the single-source lighting. . There’s this Danish painter [Vilhelm] Hammershøi who has this very soft light. But we went into the hard side of the lighting. We looked at Barry Lyndon, because that’s the same period. We shot in some of the same castles as Barry Lyndon. At the beginning we talked about maybe we should do the same thing as they did, shoot everything in candlelight. But in the end we backed away from that because we wanted the black to be black. And when you have candles, everything is lit, everything is getting super beautiful and very soft but that was not the way we wanted to go.

And we’re really big fans of shadows. When you see Barry Lyndon, it’s really beautiful, but there’s a little bit of light everywhere. There’s an image on the internet which shows a frame of Barry Lyndon, and a frame of Frankenstein and it’s the exact same location. But the light is different. Style-wise, Barry Lyndon is very much “statue shots.” It’s click, click, click, like photography, and that’s fantastic. But Guillermo is moving the camera all the time, which was also the reason we have to light the sets from outside. We are shooting 300 degrees sometimes, coming into a room in a big wide angle, and then in the end, we are turning around, and the only thing we are not seeing is the crane. So we used outside light to get the light traveling into the rooms to look very naturalistic. But the color palette is not realistic. Amber and steel blue is not realistic, but it’s very dramatic.

And those colors particularly — the amber and the steel blue — what was the inspiration for that?

The amber was for the fire effect. There are a lot of scenes where it’s lit with candles, but we are not using the candles as a key light. The candles are a prop, with lighting from the same direction. And the amber gives that fire effect. Then we have steel blue coming from the windows or from something else. I do that a lot, this contrast color. A candlelit scene and lighting the background with steel blue. So there’s the contrast, because in the real world, the background would be amber as well. We just like to get away from this monochromatic look. We want to have the contrast in lighting all the time.

I know Guillermo was talking about trying to do as much in-camera as possible. But there are some visual effects, of course, in the film. How did you combine the elements in a scene like the castle burning sequence?

When the castle is exploding, that’s a miniature we shot. We shot that together with [visual effects supervisor] Dennis Berardi. We went to London to shoot that. When the lab is collapsing, all the big batteries that are coming down, that’s a miniature. Nobody knows that. We tried to do as much in camera as we can. Tamara was building these beautiful sets. All that is done for real.

The ship is for real. In the landscape, a lot of that is real snow, with visual effects fixing it up, extending it to the North Pole or whatever, to the ocean. Some of the landscapes were helping with visual effects and sky replacements.

‘Frankenstein’

Netflix

But there’s not one scene shot on blue screen. I don’t think we did any blue screen shots at all. Everything is done for real. I love that, and Guillermo loves that it as well. All the props are for real. Everything is for real.

In the beginning, when he’s in that university and he’s using this small creature for the first time, a lot of that is practical effects. It’s just a guy standing in a blue suit and catching the ball. Everything is very low-tech. Of course, visual effects helps a lot with the details, but it’s not like the ship is a visual effect. The ship is built for real, and built on a gimbal so we can move it. All the torches on the ship are real flaming torches. Some people would do LED torches, but we don’t like that. We like to have real, organic torches. So when the wind is changing, the light is changing, and I think that’s giving a lot of life to the movie.

What was the hardest scene in Frankenstein to get right?

The biggest challenge was to shoot the creation of the creature, the monster. That scene was a challenge, because you were starting in sunset, coming in after dawn through the magic hour, then they run up to the rooftop, it starts to rain and you go into more magic hour. Then the lightning strikes start to take over. Then we change, back to the lab again. We move down from the top where it’s all smoke to the machinery where it’s all steam. Smoke sort of stays in the room, where steam is organic, it moves around. Then the rain stars and the lightning strikes, which are our key light, so we need to have two lights to make sure when [Oscar Issac] is looking up and we’re flashing the lightning strikes, you see the light on him, otherwise he’s in silhouette.

Designing all that was a challenge. But it was so cool. And in the movie, obviously, it looks pretty okay.

You also used steam for the water scenes, right, to give the effect of flowing water?

We did that on The Shape of Water, when they’re swimming in the water. It’s a trick from the old theater. If you have a 10K projector, and you’re putting a gobo in, so it looks a little bit like in a swimming pool. The steam moves around and you can’t see the difference between steam and water. The visual effects can put [in] some fish or whatever, but the effect allows the actors to actually act. Because nobody can act under water.

We started using that effect on The Shape of Water, because Sally [Hawkins] and the fish man had to be in the water. We did a test, all shot on a soundstage with smoke. When you’re standing there watching you think: “This is never going to work” but when you see the monitor, it looks perfect. It’s really cool. It’s a very simple technique from the theater.

You shot this digitally, of course. But there seems to be a mini-revival of shooting on celluloid. Was there every a consideration to shoot this on celluloid?

We talked about that a lot, if we should we go to film. And the producers, of course, are getting a heart attack. But Guillermo likes to have control of his image. He’s editing when we are setting up the next shot. He’s editing in the morning before we start. He’s editing in the evening. I come to the editing room the next morning, and I see the first cut of the scene we shot the day before. With Guillermo, we are never doing any pick-ups. We never do reshoots. Because he knows exactly where he is, he knows exactly what he wants to do, and he likes that workflow where you see dailies. And he likes good monitors. That’s the same when I’m working on a John Wick movie with Chad [Stahelski]. He likes this high-quality look. And you know, I’m a pretty old dude now. I’ve been around for a while. I shot my first feature film when I was 25, and of course I shot that on film. There was no digital world. You didn’t do anything digitally. You shot a negative, you made a print and that was it.

I’m coming from a small country, Denmark, [where] you didn’t do any DI [Digital Intermediate] prints or anything. You shot it and you made 15 prints, and that was it. That is the most beautiful way you can shoot on film. That is fantastic. But nobody does that, as far as I know. As I understand it, people are shooting on film, they’re scanning the negative into a digital world, and they’re doing everything digital. If that makes people happy, it’s fine. I think the beauty of life right now in the film world is you can do whatever you like. But I made maybe 45 features on film. And I just remember the troubles we had with the labs and scratches and bad development, all kinds of issues. And it was always the cinematographer’s fault, it was always my fault if something when wrong. Even if the lab fucked it up, everyone was pointing the finger at the cinematographer. But you have really good directors shooting on film, a lot of good movies today being shot on film. So there’s nothing wrong with that.

Does it bother you at all that, because this is a Netflix film, there won’t be as many opportunities for people to see it on the big screen in theaters?

It doesn’t bother me, no, because I cannot do anything [about] it. What I like about the streaming world is a lot of people will see the movie. This seems like it will be a bit of both — with some people seeing it in the cinema and maybe a lot in home theaters. I’m not a big fan of people watching our movies on an iPhone on a train, or where light is changing. But I think a lot of people right now have really good home cinemas, with really nice screens. Of course, I like people to see things in a good cinema. But the world has changed. [It] is changing.

I saw the film on IMAX in London some days ago and it was fantastic. The beauty of moviemaking is you have this art form with a crew working together and then you’re sitting in a cinema and you feel everybody around you has the same feeling watching the movie as you did when you made it. I think that’s beautiful.