In the eyes of cinematographer James Naist, psychology is the hidden element that makes shows like “The Midnight Club” spooky, along with other more obvious stuff like haunted hospice houses, spiritual and religious symbols, the occult and, of course, classic jumpsuits. to scare
Cinematographer James Neist told TheWrap in a recent interview, “To make things scary, a lot of it is not showing everything and letting things fall into the dark, where you don’t know what might happen.” Yes or No.”
“I also think lighting plays a huge role in this. And then sometimes like quick camera moves that reveal or even settle some obstructions where you’re barely in the background. Or maybe even really close in the foreground. Pointing at things but not showing them all so people’s minds do a lot of work for you and take on a lot of weight, because we all have our own perspectives so if you just give some hints that people will interpret in their own way, [they] You can scare yourself. It’s just leaving it to your own imagination.”
Showrunner Mike Flanagan’s latest horrific Netflix series, adapted from Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel, targets a young adult audience in its first season of ten episodes. Niest shot episodes 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7, setting the tone right from the beginning with a classic misdirection.
He said of the opening scene of the show, “You feel like something bad has happened, and I think it works, and it was fun, and that’s why it’s not scary and with it your brain.” That’s what it does.” “It’s like, ‘Oh, there’s something red going down the drain.’ We automatically think it’s blood. But then we back off to reveal, ‘No, it’s hair dye.'”
Main character Ilonka (Iman Benson) is far beyond her, has college at Stanford and a love of literature in tow, and she dyes her hair red to celebrate her high school graduation, but thyroid cancer throws all her plans into place. cancels, sends her to Brightcliffe for Hospice Manor cares for the waterfront from her Sacramento hometown.
“Brightcliff Manor has a very cavernous interior, even [when] It’s daytime, it’s still kind of mysterious. A lot of the time of day stuff, for the most part, happens in a story, which isn’t necessarily the time where the audience is trying to get scared,” Naist said. “It’s more about the relationships that the characters have and some of the storytelling and plot of the story that they’re going through during the day.”
Each resident of Brightcliff looks forward to their hospice days with an incurable disease, confinement in their own secluded setting. On their first night, Ilonka follows her roommate Anya (Ruth Codd) to a secret basement meeting between all the patients, who meet at The Midnight Club at night to tell stories and try to intimidate each other. (because they suffer early death to strengthen their shock factor).
“Each episode has at least two different stories going on — some episodes, there are sub stories inside a sub story,” Neist said. “So there’s a lot of room for our interpretation and for creativity to make things look and feel different, have a different texture and tone. So there’s a lot of variety, which I think is important for the audience as well because they like Likes all kinds of stimuli.”
The A story involves the current residents conversing in Brightcliff, and the B story consists of short stories told at a night meeting of The Midnight Club. Each episode ends with a horror story shared by club members (aka the Brightcliff residents), with characters played by the same actors who portray the A-line ensemble.
“They meet every night in front of the fire in the library at midnight to try to tell their story and come up with the most creative stories and really try to get at each other and those are B stories,” Niest said. “And those B stories are inspired by what these young people might have seen or what are their references to movies in the 80s and 90s and books and art and stuff like that in general that informs their story.”
Within the primary story, a historical timeline presents itself concerning the background of Brightcliff as Ilonka explores the grounds.
Brightcliff’s installation allowed Naist to work with production designer Lauryn Kelsey to insert windows into parts of the structure for light sources. Several hallways and corridors also provided unique challenges for choreographing and staging.
“The interior of Brightcliff – it’s got a lot of hallways, which I think was pretty amazing when it all came together,” he said. “So we had to come up with ways like, ‘How are we going to light these for A stories and for B stories and then through different periods. All that was shot on stage. We had an actual hospice No, we built a small mask on a rock, and the rest are all CG and so the interior was built from scratch on stage.”
Flanagan jumped 21 times in the first episode alone, breaking a Guinness World Record.
“Jump scars are a traditional style mechanism for getting feedback from the audience. I know Mike Flanagan is famous for saying he doesn’t care. He thinks they could potentially be cheap,” says Niest Said. “But I know a lot of fans for this kind of style. It is like a roller coaster. They know what’s about to happen, they know the drop is coming, but they still want it and enjoy it. So I think it’s something that has a little bit of hope. So in doing so, it’s a lot of choreography and setting, setting up camera moves in concert with the movement of the actors. And then it all happens in editing so you can cut wherever you want.”
Niest also recognizes the differences between all of Flanagan’s works, particularly in terms of the age group of “The Midnight Club” audiences.
“It definitely falls short of the traditional horror genre stuff with graphic or disturbing images. A lot of things in the show are more psychological and it’s more about what the youth are going through and then they Tell stories,” he said. “I know people are a little surprised by the target audience for this show. And some of the material is probably not as deep or as mind-boggling as some [Flanagan’s] other work, but I think he was a big fan of Christopher Pike’s books and there were a lot of people, so it’s really nice to see it all come to life in such a variety of ways, trying to do something like this. There’s a Netflix season to do. ,
“The Midnight Club” is now streaming on Netflix.
