American Cinematographer - December 2000 - 75

ing to re-create the crude yet effective
ratlike visage of Murnau's vampire,
makeup artist Pauline Fowler and
her crew chose to reimagine Orlok by
enhancing Dafoe's own features.
"When we were creating the makeup,
we had the memory of Nosferatu in
the back of our minds, which

was

not

to

use

much

too

toplight, because Willem had rubber
all

over

his

face, and if I used

too

much

light you might start to see it. I
just kept my eyes on it and adjusted
the lighting and changed the filters
on the camera
[accordingly]."
In fact, the challenge in filming
Schreck's eerie introductory scene,
which was shot at night, was keeping
the light almost entirely off the
vampire. "I wanted you to sometimes
think there was somebody there and
to sometimes [wonder if there really
was]," Bogue remembers. "The light¬
ing had to be really down, very lowkey, as Schreck came out of the hole
he was living in. You've got to really
look to see him. Jerome Lighting
supplied some special lights with
perfect black reflectors, which
allowed
ows.

us

to create

the hardest shad¬

If I'd used the usual silver reflec¬

tor, I

might have gotten

double
just two
antique lights for Willem as he
a

shadow off the bowl. I used
small
came

out: one was to

the left of the

doorway, and the other was a bit
farther back. I used the yellow filters
to give those units an antique yellow
look, and I added a Lee % Blue on my

lights to create
moonlight effect.

tungsten

"Because it

was

a

a

pointers from
Merhige.
Below: Dafoe,
as

cold

real castle

exterior, the ground was never level;

Schreck,

glides through
an atmospheric
cave.

the

only way to capture the essence of the
character," Fowler says. "If we'd
looked at [the film closely], it would
have been so tempting to try and do
more. Willem's face is
just perfect, so
we
deliberately kept as much of him
as
possible. How can you not?!"
Bogue found that lighting the
simple but elaborate makeup, which
took up to five hours to apply,
required some finesse. "I just had to
be careful

Left: Dafoe
takes some

it

awkward to place lights,
make do with plenty of
sandbags to weigh things down," he
continues. "I used some flags to block
the light off Willem's face, so he
moved in and out of light. One

rostrums

minute he's

were no

was

so we

very

had

to

there, and the next

minute he's gone.

The light was very

low, but I could read it
and check it

on

the meter

against a Polaroid."

The castle used for the interior

of Schreck's

decrepit abode was in a
disrepair. Gorton's crew
made the location more presentable
by supplying the raised platforms
that would have been present when
true state

of

Murnau shot his film in 1922. "We
were on
on

location, in

a

castle, working

six-foot wooden

rostrums

at

night, and the floor below the

stresses.

was

all

rock!"

Bogue

"We could have been work¬

ing in a quarry. The castle's been sort
of cleaned up for tourists, but it's not
like

a

nice, flat floor - far from it! It's

all rocks and boulders, and there

safety rails like you'd have on
grips put boards
down for the actors to walk on. They
used to laugh every day at building
what they called a 'dance floor,' which
was flat and perfect, so the camera
a

set.

could
level. I

Our French

move

all around and remain

you that there was
nothing flat in that castle - not even
the road up to it!"
In fact, getting the equipment
up to the castles was a logistical
nightmare. "I'd send two English
guys out in front with four local
can assure
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