TECHNIQUE HORROR
SCARE TACTICS DOPs Krzysztof Trojnar and Vince Knight talk tackling the horror genre and share their top techniques for building suspense on-screen
F rom slow zooms to POV shots, and shadows. Steven Spielberg played with the idea that suspense comes from what’s unseen (the shark in Jaws gets four minutes of screen time), forcing the audience to use its imagination. From movement to framing and lighting, DOPs have learnt how best to scare us; to feel dread, thrill or disgust. For Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen there’s an art to engineering fear. John Carpenter mastered the slow burn with long takes, wide shots – a horror series about the wedding jitters, produced by the Duffer Brothers – DOP Krzysztof Trojnar drew inspiration from Rosemary’s Baby . Like Rosemary’s fear that her baby is in danger, “the fear of the wedding becomes the horror,” says Trojnar. “Later, you feel like that anxiety
was there for a reason.” A PERSONAL TOUCH
To portray such intense anxiety, Trojnar knew that he had to stay on Rachel, the
WORDS KATIE KASPERSON
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