ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke about working on Robert Eggers’ new Focus Features vampire horror movie, Nosferatu. Blaschke discussed creating dimly lit sequences that are still visible, his recent Oscar nomination, and more.
“Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake,” the synopsis for the movie reads.
Nosferatu is now available on Premium Video on Demand. It will be released on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on February 18, 2025.
Brandon Schreur: I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about how you got involved with this project. I know you’ve worked with Robert Eggers before on The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman. Those are all great movies. I remember hearing Robert Eggers talk about how he’s been trying to get this movie made for a long time. At what point did you get involved and what was your reaction when you got the call saying, ‘We’re doing Nosferatu and Robert wants to work with you again?’
Jarin Blaschke: I mean, we’ve been friends for a long time. I met him 17, 18 years ago, actually. We did a short film together. Then we just started hanging out. We’d do these man dates where we’d go, you know, look at Dürer engravings at the Met and other such things. We’d just hang out. We were in our 20s, we weren’t working, and I was sleeping on a friend’s couch. So we really just got to be friends and learn each other, personally, and aesthetically for seven years before The Witch was made.
Then we made a short film in preparation for The Witch, basically over a long weekend. Then we made that movie.
I don’t want to take him for granted, you know. I always say, ‘If you choose to work with me again, blah blah blah.’ But it’s just sort of, whenever there’s a new idea — here’s the new one. I usually hear about it before it’s even officially happening. So we get to talk about these movies, sometimes, for years before there’s a script, in a couple of cases.
That, really, in addition to a long prep that we now enjoy, there’s also this gestation period where things can kind of come about organically that I really love. It’s without pressure because there’s enough on set, you know?
I’m sure. Nosferatu is a movie that is very dark, both in tone and also because a lot of it takes place at nighttime and in the shadows. And I love the work you’re doing here because, it’s a dark movie, but I’m not squinting the whole time to see what’s happening. And there have been some recent examples of where that has happened, where things are too dark. How big of a challenge was that, in general, when making, filming, and creating these sequences that are dark but that are still actually visible to see?
That’s a long lesson that you learn over several movies. I mean, we did The Witch. We wanted a low-contrast look; we just wanted a really miserable, slightly flat, no highlights. We’ll hit black at the bottom, but it’s digital so it has this big toe, so it has a lot of shadow information and then the top is kind of flattened out. We did it on a monitor. Basically, what was in the theater, was just an algorithm taking what works in a monitor into the theater, which does not really work because the theater chops the lows off. We were pushing on the highs, so all that’s left is this muddy middle. And then it’s also dim. So that was our first giant lesson.
Since then, it’s just sort of finding the lighting ratios that work in a lot of cinemas. The Northman, we got 80 percent there. With this one, it’s really finessing what the lighting ratio should be. It’s just kind of foundational photography that can take a lot of time and a lot of movies to figure out. I would say that, just for this movie, it’s sort of a career of finding it.
Sure, that makes total sense. Kind of building off that, you did The Lighthouse, too, the cinematography for that movie. I love The Lighthouse to death, I’ll never stop talking about it for the rest of my life. But that’s obviously all in black and white. Nosferatu isn’t in black and white but, almost, at times, it feels like it. Just because the color and tone are all diluted. So, I’m curious, what’s harder to do — filming completely in black-and-white for The Lighthouse or doing Nosferatu, where there is color but not a ton of it?
It really is just the moonlight that I tend to do monochromatic because that’s how I personally see moonlight. If I want to be really literal and biological with it, I don’t perceive color. I mean, if you take a digital photo a night, you’ll see all the colors. If you take a digital picture of stars, they’ll be all different colors. But if you see it with your eye, they’re just not there because it’s your scotopic vision working, which is the rods in your eyes, not the cones. Anyway, that’s why that’s monochromatic.
The daytime scenes, the dusk, and the candlelight and all that stuff, I broadened the spectrum. But that’s also relative because we don’t like high color saturation, either.
Technically, it’s different in The Lighthouse just because we’re shooting on a filmstock that Kodak came up with in 1959 as opposed to a color film that Kodak put on the market probably in 2009. It’s just a more forgiving stock. But I think the lighting technique, nonetheless, has been honed through two substantial movies, at this point. It looks a lot better.
Totally. I’m also curious, Nosferatu is obviously a remake. We all know the 1920s movie. But I’m wondering how much of an inspiration that served. Cinema wouldn’t be what it is today without the original Nosferatu, all the expressionism in the shadows and everything is so influential. How much were you going back to that as a reference, or were you not at all? Were you trying to do your completely own thing, here?
Yeah, it was important that we not do expressionism, it was important that we do romanticism because it takes place in 1838. That’s probably the simplest reason. Also, a film made now is not really going to be like a film made then, regardless. But it’s a bunch of reasons. Our lighting is just going to be a very sweetened, curated version of naturalism — whatever that means — to us. That’s just how I think about lighting. That’s another reason it’s not going to be expressionistic.
It needed to be different than the other one. This kind of needs to set its own course; otherwise, I don’t know how it justifies itself. Yeah, that was the thinking there.
Sure, that makes sense. And, again, I love Nosferatu because it has such a distinct look. It’s totally different. I think one of my favorite shots is something we first saw in the trailer, but it’s that image of Count Orlock’s hand descending upon the whole village and you can see it overtaking it. I loved that. I was curious how you actually, like, did that. Because it looks so cool.
Yeah, that’s a CG shot, but the difference is that I was involved with all of the CG. I was lighting the CG like I would the set. A lot of times, the DP is off the clock and then goes on another movie, takes a long vacation, commercials, or whatever. And the VFX team will just sort of run with it and, from what I’ve heard, it’s not really integrated very much into the general movie.
But I was just looking at all the work, on a monthly basis, and getting notes. It was important that all that CG stuff is lit to the same lighting ratios, and as exactly the same color and tonality, as the other footage so that it doesn’t feel like CG.
The moonlight is just as hard. It has the same quality of hardness. You can go into the math — if you put a moon on the screen, it needs to be 1/80th of the width of the shot because that’s what it would be. Sometimes you see a movie and the moon is, like, this big [makes hand gesture].
Oh, yeah, I notice that immediately, too. Well, great, I also wanted to say real quick congratulations on your Oscar nomination, which was announced last week. That’s super exciting. I don’t know if I should be saying it, but I’m rooting for you and putting you in my Oscars bracket. What was your reaction when you got the nomination?
It’s funny because I have a cat — somebody was here to cat-sit because I was, like, leaving town. Someone told me they were going to announce them at such and such time, so I had my laptop open. She happened to arrive right as they were announcing the category. I was a little distracted because she was trying to figure out where the cat food is going to come from, the litter box, and all this stuff. The moment was all about the cat. And then she left and I got to react.
Thanks to Jarin Blaschke for discussing Nosferatu.
