PRODUCTION FRANKENSTEIN
“Guillermo had been dreaming of making this film his whole life” DOP Dan Laustsen, ASC, DFF talks painting with light in Frankenstein, his latest collaboration with Guillermo del Toro
WORDS OLIVER WEBB IMAGES NETFLIX
A dapted from Mary Shelley’s egotistical scientist and his attempts to bring a monstrous creature to life. This marks del Toro’s fifth collaboration with Dan Laustsen, ASC, DFF, having previously collaborated on Mimic (1997), Crimson Peak (2015), The Shape of Water (2017) and Nightmare Alley (2021). Director del Toro had been discussing the idea of adapting the novel with Laustsen as early as Crimson Peak . “After The Shape of Water , he told me he was writing the screenplay,” begins Laustsen. “I read the book and it’s a really great story, but then I read the screenplay and it was totally different. It shouldn’t have 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein follows an
surprised me, this is Guillermo del Toro and the way he looks at stuff is great.” GOTHIC WORLDBUILDING During the early stages of production, Laustsen looked at the work of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. “His paintings have this very classic single- source lighting from the windows,” he says. “We didn’t really talk about other movies,” he admits, except for Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975). ”We were shooting in some of the same locations it used and it’s a masterpiece, so we thought why not look at it? I’m sure Guillermo had lots of other references, but we wanted to make our own world.” Del Toro and Laustsen wanted to make a period movie, without it looking
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