The Making of Nosferatu

Nosferatu marks the fourth feature-length collaboration between writer-director Robert Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, following The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. Working with a story inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula and F.W. Murnau’s famed silent adaptation, the 1922 Nosferatu, Eggers and Blaschke sought to craft a visual language that would reflect the popular painting style of their film’s 1830s time period. Toward that end, Blaschke worked with Panavision to assemble a lens package that included historic Baltar optics and custom lenses made by Panavision’s Special Optics team and inspired by Blaschke’s interest in vintage optical designs. In this video, Blaschke shares pages from his notebook, discusses his continuing collaboration with Eggers, and details how he landed on the particular lenses he used to bring Nosferatu into the light.

Perfectionism and Romanticism

"I've known Rob for 17 years," Blaschke reflects. "We have issues with being perfectionists, so that was very comforting because usually when you're a little bit of a perfectionist and nothing's really good enough, to find someone else who wasn't going to roll until it was right really was lovely.

“I don't remember when he first brought up Nosferatu," the cinematographer continues. "He sent me a script I think in 2015." Where F.W. Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu is a classic example of German expressionist cinema, Blaschke notes that Eggers’ film “is a romantic movie. It's not a 1922 view of 1838, it's an 1838 view of 1838. If anyone saw any art, it would've been in paintings, not photographs. So what was the style of painting at the time? Hands down romanticism.”

A Language for Horror

With Nosferatu, Blaschke and Eggers continued to build on the visual language they've been developing throughout their previous collaborations. "Having come from Northman, we're really trying to push ourselves with the blocking," the cinematographer notes. "So that was brought to Nosferatu, but in a chamber scene now instead of an exterior with more action.

"I think Rob just likes classical composition anyway," he adds, "so we're always kind of putting things out in a very simple symmetrical way. If you really push the symmetry, it can get oppressive, which isn't right for everything. But I think in horror movie you can lean into that and make it work."

Testing Lenses

For all of his feature collaborations with Eggers, Blaschke has worked with Panavision to source his camera and lens packages. "Panavision is sort of a given for me," he says. "There's just a bespoke element that I'm not really going to get anywhere else. The way Rob and I work - and we're talking about ideas early on - I can bring up lens questions to Dan [Sasaki, Panavision senior vice president of optical engineering and lens strategy] as soon as I know about any potential movie that's going to be made."

As he began prep for Nosferatu, Blaschke shares, “I knew that we needed high-speed lenses for the candlelight because I wanted to use real candles again. I knew I needed the fastest lens he could provide for reflex camera. I knew that I wanted to explore lens designs that I hadn't used. I wanted new textures. I want to kind of push what I know and do something different every film.

“I proposed some classical lens designs to him,” Blaschke recalls of his early conversation with Sasaki about Nosferatu. “He made a Heliar and a Dagor, which are lenses that aren't even made for movies, and we tested them, and I learned a lot about them. I really liked the [vintage Baltar] lenses from The Lighthouse, and when I shot The Lighthouse, I was like, 'These probably look really good in color.' So I tested them in color, and that was sort of our baseline."

Blaschke stresses that testing is paramount in order to understand "what ingredients you like in a lens and others that you don't. I light through windows a lot. It's going to bloom. I know that's going to happen, but at what overexposure value is it going to be too much for me personally? You've got to just run the gauntlet. You've got to do your homework."

Moving the Camera

"We're interested in formalism, and even though the setups can get pretty complicated, it's in the service of simplicity to the viewer," Blaschke says. "You may have this ridiculous rig where it's an interior, but you're on a crane and you've got to stick it through the wall, and then you've got to have your lights change just so you can do a 270 shot, which could be very indulgent. But my hope is that to the audience, it's just a simple presentation, but also keeping Rob's formal taste intact. And at the same time it's naturalistic as far as the lighting and hopefully in the performances."

The audience's expectations are also a consideration as Blaschke and Eggers determine their shots. "I'm always trying to find, also, what's unexpected in the camera movement," the cinematographer explains. "What's the audience expecting next? We're in the castle, but the camera should, I felt, have a presence, leading the character somewhere. We're going down a hall and camera just leaves Thomas [Nicholas Hoult] and goes to the door where he's going. We're going to hold on it, and we're probably pushing a little too slow. It's that right amount of frustration. Also, when do you withhold information? When do you satisfy? How hungry should they be? If the audience is too hungry and you're not providing enough, they'll disconnect, but if you just keep feeding them, they just get lazy. We're trying to ride that line."

Such careful artistic considerations are integral to Blaschke's approach to his craft. He concludes, "I feel like just trying to be a cinematographer is such a sacrifice, if you make it, make it worthwhile. I just try to go further and further."