By Derrick Loo
Asian horror films have always been a staple for local movie goers who relish surrendering themselves to eerie moods and hair raising soundtracks which so frequently come coupled with the ever effective jump scares. Not that 'Bring Back The Dead' 《招魂》 lacks any of these, in fact the film has its fair share of well crafted moods and jump scares to satisfy any horror fans, the strength of the film is that it seeks to deliver a lot more than just a plain horror piece. The emotional crux that anchors the film brings to it a layer of poignancy and human drama - a quality that will continue to grip the audience even when we all know the ordeal is over.
Helmed by veteran director, Lee Thean-Jeen (TJ), this film is the culmination of 7 years of efforts, and is based on a short story, Bringing Back the Dead, by Wong Swee Hoon. The film is about a loving couple who lost their son, Xiao Le (Shawn Tan), in an unexpected accident. Unable to bear the loss, the distraught mother, Jia En (Jesseca Liu), employs the help of her nanny (Liu Ling Ling) to seek a medium to bring back the boy's spirit - all behind her husband's (Jacko Chiang) back. After a successful attempt to reclaim the spirit, Jia En is tasked to strictly follow a set of instructions from the medium. Unintentional lapses on her part, however, prove disastrous and incur the wrath of the spirit which is bent on harming Jia En and the people (and animal) around her. This drives Jia En to investigate if the spirit that was reclaimed is indeed her son's and that very endeavor unexpectedly reveals a harrowing truth.
To help him with the visuals, TJ recruited Joel San Juan, who had worked extensively with the director on various projects ranging from TV dramas to the former's earlier feature films. The actual prep of the film begins 6 weeks before principal photography which started in June 2014 but even before that, Joel and TJ had begun their work together since Joel received the script back in February. The film was shot over a span of 19 days, using ARRI Alexa Plus with Cooke S4 T2 lenses (18mm, 32mm, 75mm, 100mm), recording ProRes 4:4:4:4 directly into SxS cards.
Joel has graciously agreed to do an email interview with Cinemacraft.sg and share his experience and approach in the making of this film.
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Derrick Loo (DL): Who was the first person to approach you with the project? And what were your reactions/ personal thoughts when it's revealed that it's going to be a horror film?
JSJ: This
is officially our second feature film together that he wrote. The one
other was more of an existing script that he was hired to direct.
That aside, our working relationship has had a longer span than that.
We first met working on a French television series in 2008 and have
since done a good body of work together including local episodic
television series such as 'The Pupil'. We joke about it constantly but
it's scary how much we think alike! I think there is a certain synergy
working with TJ because he trusts the people around him alot and he
lets them excel in what they do. And one most important element is
our working mantra: always try out something new on every project that we
do.In the 7 years that I've known him, I don't think I have ever seen him shout and scream at any actor or crew just to get something done. His approach is very unassuming and subtle and many will just end up with sheer admiration of how he runs a set quietly and with extreme efficiently (we shot this movie in 19 days!). We do plan quite a number of specific shots together but we also keep a lot of things open (needless to say, we are not any assistant director’s best friends). It is always weird to me that the media always states TJ as a comedy director because to me, he has directed more narrative dramas than comedies.
DL: Share with us how you were involved in the pre-production planning stage.
JSJ: Every job I have worked on with TJ has been an education journey in itself. The people that make the main difference in my opinion are your production design and art department gang. They are the ones who make your movie look credible. Kenneth Kee, the film's Art Director, and I talked so much in detail about the look and feel of the story and most importantly, the color palette. He was very respectful of TJ and my ideas but at the same time also added on things that we never thought about that benefited the movie on a deeper level. We also worked with the make-up and wardrobe team to make sure they got the palette close to where we wanted it due to the desaturation that we’ll be doing in post color grade later on. So we took photos of what they proposed and did some desaturation in Adobe Photoshop at different levels to ensure that the colors were right.
DL: How did you arrive at the choice of using the Alexa Plus coupled with Cookes lenses?
DL: I understand you shot most, if not all, of the film with white balance set to 3200K. Why is that?
JSJ: I attended a workshop by Paul Cameron, ASC during the Camerimage festival in Poland a couple of years back where I had a short film that I shot in the competition. He was teaching the Alexa workshop and he talked about how he noticed that the Alexa picked up more skin detail when it was white balance 3200K. He did a few demonstrations to further reiterate his point and I was sold. I talked to him more in depth after the class and he shared more about how to achieve a great skin tone at 3200K even in full daylight. I myself have since tried that technique on other digital cinema cameras but the Alexa still shows better results in that aspect. In 'Bring Back The Dead', Jesseca is in almost more than 80% of the film and we spend a lot of time seeing her up close. So skin tone and details were of utmost priority in this film.
DL: Was there any optical filters that you used during principal photography?
JSJ: I
got Bert Tan (Bert Lighting House), who was one of our producers as
well as our production equipment rental house, to get a set of Tiffen’s
new Black Satin filters and a T1 filter as well. I have seen tests
for the Black Satins and they definitely played a huge difference in
getting the skin texture right for this movie. They are so different
from the Pro Mist and Soft Contrast filters in giving a soft glow in
the highlights while giving a warmer grainier feel. I took into
consideration that most of the scenes will be in low key lighting
with hard contrast so I ordered the Black Satins to help soften out
the skin tones in the highlights and give a creamy silkier look.
After the first test shot, TJ was sold on the Black Satins already.As for the T1, it was the very much-needed filter to assist the Alexa in getting more subtle hues in the reds while blocking out Far Red contamination (especially on dark materials). While the Alexa already has its own IR (infrared) cut filter, it still does not sufficiently cut out the Far Red. Having an additional IR filter will more or less defeat the purpose. So the T1 was the best choice for the movie.
JSJ: My
key technical crew included gaffer
Ben Ong and key grip Abdul Malik. I always hire my own key technical
crew and let them hire their own team. I don’t get involved in the
process of who they select because I trust my key to make their own
decisions.It was my first time working with Ben and from the very get-go, there was already a very good energy to our working relationship. He and his team (especially his best boy Eric Tan) were so well organized that it put me at complete ease on set and that helped me concentrate so much better on the frame. I appreciate a very silent and efficient crew and his is definitely top notch in that aspect. Many of the production crew commented that they almost never see us talking but yet equipment moves on set as if a silent hand was constantly at work controlling the traffic.
Abdul Malik and I have done lots of work together since the time I was a camera grip many years back. He enjoys my wacky ideas for camera movement and I enjoy the fact that he can get any idea of mine done without much hassle. If you watch the movie, there were a good handful of shots that were subtle but extremely difficult to achieve. He made it all happen and again when you have crew you can trust, you can give so much more to the story and the frame.
DL: On-set grading has over the years gain popularity. Did you have such a workflow?
JSJ: I
still go old school in the sense and I know somewhere down the road,
I would have to change that mindset. From the first day I learn
about exposure during the film days it was always with a light and
spot meter. I trust what I see on set with my eyes and I refer to my
contrast glass whenever I am in doubt about the contrast ratio.
Working with the ARRI Alexa also gives you that added ease because
you know what you see through the viewfinder is what you are going to
get. I haven’t got around to using a waveform or a monitor to judge
exposure yet. We (TJ and I) collectively decided that we will be
recording ProRes 4:4:4:4 directly to the SxS cards. This was for the
ease of workflow and also we were going to do a very
character driven narrative with very minimal special effects. On set, we just
viewed everything on REC709.The beautiful color depth that the Alexa gave us was ample for what we needed. We had a few bad experiences in the past dealing with the RAW format workflow with the available local post-production facilities and I guess although things might have improved recently, it's more of a "once-bitten-twice-shy" syndrome. After off-loading the ProRes 4:4:4:4, the footage was transcoded to ProRes 4:2:2 (Proxy) at Infinite Frameworks for the ease of the offline and we later relinked the ProRes 4:4:4:4 files for the colorgrade at Finish Postproduction in Boston.
DL: In the film, the house is perpetually bathed in nuanced shadows. And
even with the other high-key scenes, there's always this sense of
dread pervading the entire picture. Share with us your methods and
your choice of color palette.
JSJ: TJ
wanted the entire movie to have a slight desaturated look and
somewhat high contrast at the same time. We discussed a variety of
color palettes and eventually settled on one with earthy tones and a
separate one for the theme of Red (we were inspired from M.Night
Shyamalan’s use of color and fog from breaths to depict the presence
of a supernatural entity). A lot of the credit also goes to the
production design, make up and wardrobe team. They understood the
importance of getting the tones just right to achieve the sense of
dread. There’s only so much lighting and camera work you can do. I
think the local film industry heavily under utilizes the capabilities
of the production design, make up and wardrobe teams to help tell the
story. We forget that they are artists as well. I can honestly tell
you that we did very little with the lighting compared with most
other movies out there. Ben and I would just decide the direction of
the key light and maintain a 3:1 contrast ratio throughout the entire
film except for the day exterior where we will go 2:1. The rest is
the work of the art, make up and wardrobe department. Generally I
just feel we lack the proper appreciation for their importance in the
local film industry.
DL: What
was your lighting package like? JSJ: For budgetary reasons, I had to split my lighting package to 3 parts. The house, day exteriors (cemetery) and night exteriors (cemetery). The house package consisted of a 4K HMI Par, three 2.5K HMI Fresnels, six 2K Tungsten Fresnels, two 1K Tungsten Lanterns and about five 650w Tungstens. We had 20x20 and 12x12 Ultra Bounce and a 20x20 Silk. We had a 6K HMI Par for the day exteriors with reflectors, bounce and silks. The night exterior we had two Maxi Brutes and two 5K Tungsten Fresnels.
All camera, lighting and grip equipment was from Bert Lighting House. The Cooke lenses were from Asia Film Equipment Sdn Bhd.
DL: Was there any special lighting set up that was memorable for you? And why so?
JSJ: The day interior scene where Mdm Seetoh finds Jia En at the corner of the piano room after the funeral of Xiao Le. TJ and I are big fans of Bernardo Bertolucci and we have been talking about doing a Bertolucci tribute shot in one of our movies together. So we finally found the chance to do it in this scene. Jia En is completely trapped in the darkness of the room and she is cornered by her own depression, refusing to come out into the light. We referred to the famous ‘Plato’s Cave’ office scene in 'Il Conformista' (Bertolucci, Mars Film 1970) where the intensity of the scene is further emphasized by a hot shaft of daylight, directing the audience around the mindset of the characters. So we set a 4k Par with a spot glass a distance away to create a very long sharp throw. Art department came in to help reinforce the translucent curtains with a black backing to cut all light coming in. We hazed up the entire room and set little slot in the curtains to emphasize some furniture edges and a white porcelain mug on the floor to make the room feel much darker than it is (small white dot on a black background theory - simultaneous contrast). In the end, the shot worked because it fulfilled the Plato’s Cave ideology and it also emphasized the character’s suffering in terms of the light direction and the frame.
DL: Could you share with us how you shot your favorite scenes?
JSJ: I feel that the ‘one shot’ breakfast scene where Jia En discovers the wall full of crayon drawings after her husband De Wei points it out to her easily stands out as one of my favorite scenes. For the shot, we initially wanted to try out doing it without any cuts. However, flying in the art department to quickly repaint the wall in the middle of the take proved too difficult for the lighting (moving shadows) and especially for the sound department. So we decided to do a cut in between since using a body wipe toward the end of the shot will be a predictable and obviously giveaway. I can’t tell you where we did the cut anyway! Also, since it was a handheld ‘one shot’ that went around the dining room with HMIs throwing in from the windows, avoiding shadows was also one of the really big challenges. I think that’s where my experience from years as a Steadicam operator came in really handy in terms of knowing where to set a lighting angle for a complete 360 degree movement and knowing how to avoid shadows.
DL: Was there any particularly challenging scenes?
JSJ: The stunt scenes were the most challenging especially the one that require the maid, Anna, to fall down a flight of stairs in the house. We had a very tight and dark area to work in and we had wires everywhere. It was also suppose to be the end part of a 360 degree camera 'roundy-round'. So trying to get the timing right to make everything work took much longer than expected, not to mention the danger elements for the actor and stunt coordinator involved. The short evening turned into a very very long night.
DL: Share with us how you worked with TJ on set.
JSJ: We
would start by giving the heads of departments a run down of the
scene and ideally how many shots we were going to do per set up. A
makeshift shot list is only invented as we go. Unless there’s a
specific shot that had to be in there, we usually keep it open until
we have seen the end of the blocking of the actors. After the block,
we will re-discuss with the actors’ input as well what works best
for the shot. Then we break up into our own departments and start
building up the shot. I find that a lot more gets done per hour on
set when everything is discussed systematically during the blocking.
Sometimes during the take itself, we discover something else that
works! Then we throw in that extra shot in there. But most times we
keep it simple. His approach was to try to make it feel like there’s
an uninterrupted feel to the shots.JSJ: I approached Rob Bessette at Finish Post in Boston to help me out with the color grade. I’ve seen his work before and was very impressed with his eye for detail and most importantly his working philosophy of grading for the story rather than showing off techniques. His passion to get this story told right was the key to this successful collaboration. He would first work generally on the global look of the movie based on my guidelines of how much cyan I wanted in the blacks and how much red I wanted in the highlights etc. Then we would meet to view the primary grade, critique it and then work more on a scene level. After all that is done, we will then nitpick on the smaller more crucial details and work on it until it is right. I have to applaud Rob and his team at Finish Post for their amazing work ethics and their dedication to getting it right. I have never been happier with a color grade like his. Its just beautiful!
DL: What system was it graded on? How it was monitored?
JSJ: 'Bring Back The Dead' was graded on a DaVinci Resolve system and monitored on P3 enabled monitors corrected for REC709 as a base. This workflow worked very well after a few test workflows between Finish Post, MochaChai Lab (who handled the DCP) and Infinite Frameworks. It was a virtual collaboration that I have to say impressed me quite a bit. I felt that we discovered a great cross continent workflow that will definitely benefit many others who decide to go that route later on.
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