Definition June/July 2026 - Web

HORROR TECHNIQUE

bride-to-be. “We described the ‘Rachel shot’ as a master shot on a Steadicam,” he says. “Throughout the season, it’s a progression of movement; we’re starting with the Steadicam, and then it gradually goes to a gimbal rig and then ends up being handheld.” Regardless of what’s happening, Trojnar wanted the camera to ‘travel with her, wherever she goes’. Switching to handheld often signals future chaos. In Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (part of the so-called Twisted Childhood Universe, or TCU), DOP Vince Knight also manipulated the camera movement. He notes: “To make things feel more frantic. There’s a fight sequence towards the end of the film, when Wendy is trying to escape. We kept ramping up the movement as the scene went on.” Knight, like Trojnar, likes to stick with his subjects, conveying their thoughts and fears so the audience can empathise. He often holds a smooth, continuous shot, ‘staying with them for a period

of time, without cutting, to give the audience the feeling that they’re with the character’. On Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 , there’s a therapy session sequence, and the protagonist begins to lose his grasp on reality. Knight rigged both the camera and actor on a single dolly, so they moved together while the background stayed the same size, suggesting that he’s sliding into insanity. Camera movements can have different impacts, depending on tone. For example, a slow spin around the main character is a romance staple – but Trojnar used it in Something Very Bad to convey emotional suffocation, “creating this vertigo effect,” he says. Rachel’s fiancé, Nicky, has a strangely intense family, who circle her like a wake of vultures (what’s scarier than in-laws?) as she tries on his mother’s wedding dress. At one point, we switch over to Rachel’s POV, who Trojnar replaced with a headless mannequin. “We have the camera spinning 360° as it follows

ALWAYS WATCHING Pinocchio: Unstrung (left) and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen (above) use creative camera work

the other characters,” with Rachel’s hands coming out from underneath. The series opens on Rachel’s POV, too. As she walks down the aisle, we see the view from underneath her veil and hear her breathing, Darth Vader style. Trojnar opted mostly for a wide-angle lens and combined that with close-ups, often with the subject centred and looking straight into the camera. “I’m a strong believer that closeness gives you a window into what they’re feeling,” he states. Knight, on the other hand, went wide in Bambi : The Reckoning . The forest is a character, he says. “The actors feel really small in the frame, and the woods feel very expansive surrounding them. Quite a few times, the actor would look somewhere, trying to see in the darkness, and there would be a still frame. We’d

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