ENCOUNTERS PRODUCTION
THE SERIES INTRODUCES BOTH scripted elements, like reenactments , AND THE SUPERNATURAL”
UNEXPLAINABLE The production team subtly paid homage to sci-fi films of old when telling the story, shooting episodes in a large format to evoke a Cinemascope aesthetic
figures for dramatic effect, elevating it to cinematic status. “We very much wanted this to feel like a movie,” begins Cragg, “where something like Beckham , we did not want to make it feel like a movie,” he says of his other recent Netflix project. “At first, we didn’t want to ever reveal anything,” recounts Cragg. “I think Netflix saw the first cuts, and they were like, ‘Oh, great, can’t wait to see the UFOs!’ so we made it feel like [the object] was just out of frame or we had a secondary way of disguising it.” The crew combined in-camera lighting effects with practical techniques like shadows and reflections to hint at –
but never reveal – foreign objects and life forms. In one scene, an impossibly large creature stands outside a window. “We created that shadow, you know, that’s a real shadow. That’s somebody on stilts.” GALACTIC GEAR Cragg and his crew settled on the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF as the main camera. “We thought that shooting in large format would give us the sort of Cinemascope look,” he explains. “Apart from just being super, super wide, it’s a nod to science- fiction films, cinema and storytelling – all of that.”
or adults, to give [the subjects] a huge amount of respect visually and with what they were looking at, even if we may not believe it,” says Cragg. “We were never going to pass that judgement.” Although Encounters is largely unscripted and non-fiction, the series introduces both scripted elements like reenactments, and supernatural elements like UFOs and alien-esque
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