Haris Zambarloukos served as director of photography on director Tim Burton’s latest film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The Warner Bros. feature reunites Burton with actor Michael Keaton to create the long-awaited sequel to the director’s 1988 feature.
“I was responsible for the lighting, camera and photographic needs of the film,” explains Zambarloukos. “We used Sony Venice 2 cameras, and Panavision Ultra Panatar 2 lenses and Auto Panatar lenses. The Auto Panatars were some of the first anamorphic lens series ever made.”
So much of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is set in darkness. The Sony Venice 2’s light sensitivity at 3200 ASA helped reveal the shadows, notes the DP.
“The lenses are such classic glass. They really helped bring out the portraiture.”
Many scenes in the film, he adds, needed a very particular form of cinematography that could accommodate the performances.
“For example, the boiler room scenes, where Beetlejuice and his team of Shrinkers answer calls about bio exorcism requests, had a very particular aesthetic and a very particular challenge,” Zambarloukos recalls. “The aesthetic was that of a room that glowed in the afterlife light. That was created by setting up banks of RGBW LED lights through a very large, frosted screen with an undulating color of light (starting with green, and going through cyan, blue and into magenta, then rolling back) coming through the set windows.”
The practical lighting inside the room also had programmed, hidden color lighting.
“It all pulsed and blended together to create an overall ambient light that was enough to illuminate our actors and puppets, and look and feel invisible,” he explains. “We could then devise camera moves and allow freedom of movement in the set without having to bring in additional lighting onto the set.”
The weeks of planning, rigging and programming leading up to the shoot was the key to its success.
“That motif of combining our aesthetic and our shooting regime into an effortless and integrated plan was carried out in some form or other throughout the whole film,” he notes.