Three years after transporting audiences back to colonial New England with The Witch, writer/director Robert Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke reteamed for their second feature collaboration, The Lighthouse. The year is 1890, the place a remote island off the New England coast. Two lighthouse keepers arrive for a four-week stint. One is a crusty old captain (Willem Defoe), the other a former lumberjack haunted by his past (Robert Pattison). As an endless storm batters the island, the men’s contest of wills is no less destructive. Mythic creatures and dead sailors’ souls also play a part, like the best salty sea yarns.

Blaschke created a look as unique as the story. The cinematographer shot on Kodak’s Eastman Double-X black-and-white 5222 film stock with a Panavision Millennium XL2 and 1930s/’40s Baltar lenses, and he also used custom filters that emulated early-1900s orthochromatic stock, which was sensitive to ultraviolet, blue, and green light, but not red.

Conceived before The Witch got off the ground, this two-hander, single-camera production was shot over 35 days on Cape Forchu—a rocky peninsula near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia—and in a couple of warehouse stage near Halifax. The location-built sets included a period-accurate lighthouse with working Fresnel lens, which withstood three nor’easter, as did cast and crew.

 On page 1 of his earliest drafts, Robert Eggers wrote that The Lighthouse was to be shot on 35mm black and white. Why this was important?

Years ago, when Rob first teased the idea for The Lighthouseacross his kitchen table, all I knew was that it was going to be two men, a tight space, tight aspect ratio, madness, occasional flatulence, and “black and white with a cherry on top.” I took that to mean he wanted to be unapologetically old-fashioned and to transport the audience to another world. Black and white is good for that. It’s instantly abstract.

Why not shoot color, then change it in post?

Early on, probably before The Witchwas made, Rob asked if I thought a digital format could work for black and white. As a long-time shooter of black and white still film, I didn’t think it would, since black and white film has a very particular texture—there are three-dimensional chunks of silver embedded in gelatin at different depths and sizes. It’s much more physical than even a color film image, which is made of tiny clouds of dye. 

For The Lighthouse, I performed some simple tests to address my suspicions. I shot 35mm Double-X, 35mm color film (5219), and the Arri Alexa. Our assumptions were upheld. In addition to much larger grain, the Double-X had more “tooth.” Even if you match the overall contrast in DI, the Double-X had more “local” or “micro” contrast, which emphasizes texture and better differentiates similar tones. The other two looked more dull, less alive, almost plastic by comparison, especially the Alexa footage.

Published in the November 2019 issue of American Cinematographer.