Based loosely on the familial behaviors of cuckoo birds, the story finds Gretchen out of place and uncomfortable in this new unit, desperate to get away even before Alma starts having weird seizures and Gretchen encounters a mysterious hooded woman one night.
The movie, shot beautifully on 35mm by DP Paul Faltz, creates a bright and chromatic world for this terror and employs some unique in-camera effects. We were delighted to be able to hop on Zoom with Faltz ahead of the film’s wide release to learn more. Enjoy!
Visualizing the Horror in ‘Cuckoo’
Cuckoo
NEON
A horror film isn’t all jump scares. It’s visual tension. It’s obscuring some things from the audience and deciding when to reveal other things. It’s also, as is the case with any cinematic endeavor, about conveying story through visuals and translating complicated beats into something the audience can experience.
In Cuckoo, we meet a strange nighttime creature in the hooded woman, whose voice transfixes anyone within earshot and leads to a trembling, looping sequence. That’s how Faltz communicated this experience to viewers.
“I think genre films or horror films give you a lot of freedom in just experimenting and doing stuff that you normally just wouldn’t do, like this shaking effect,” he said. “How to visualize this hooded woman’s call? Looping and doing vertical zooms and shaking the whole image around.”
These visual cues occur whenever a character is under the influence of the hooded woman. For the audience, it’s jarring and comes out of nowhere, which is very like what the characters feel—trapped and confused, repeating their actions several times.
Faltz said they had the characters act a sequence slightly differently several times to create déjà vu.
“This feeling of being trapped in a loop while the hooded woman is clearly outside and can act freely, and you’re somehow realizing it but not completely, I think it’s a really scary feeling,” he said.
As much as they could, they used “old-school filmmaking” to capture images without visual effects.
“Of course, some things have to be in VFX, but if it’s possible to do it as a practical effect, then do it as a practical effect,” he said.
Testing it first was his best advice for practical effects.
For instance, the aforementioned “shaking” effect is a rapid vibration of the image created by the hooded woman’s shriek. They initially did it in-camera.
“It started as a practical effect,” he said. “It is a mirror that is vibrating really fast, but it’s not possible to do it in all the scenes. So they ended up recreating the practical effect in VFX, but it’s still based on the real effect.”
Shooting This Nighttime Sequence
Cuckoo
NEON
The hooded woman’s first full appearance is highlighted in the trailer as a nighttime scare, a moment as Gretchen rides her bike under street lamps, her shadow morphing under each. Suddenly, another shadow is there with her, reaching.
Faltz said the moment was inspired by reality and how you can sometimes see a split double shadow in multiple light sources.
It was quite a challenging sequence to create and is his favorite on the film.
“You have to get the camera in the position that you see the shadow, and you have to create the shadow without seeing the shadow of the camera or the truck where it was mounted,” Faltz said. “We found a spot where we thought it would work, and then we recreated the street lamps with film lamps. They are much closer together than the normal street lamps would be, because the film is less sensitive than the eyes, so the shadow goes away much quicker on film than it would in real life.
“And then we figured out in 3D where the lamps would have to be, where the camera would have to be, and where the truck the camera’s riding on would have to be. We had the truck with a crane on it to get really high to get this angle, and the shadows of the car and the camera were right outside the frame.”
Advice for Aspiring DPs
Cuckoo
NEON
What does Faltz think a beginning DP should know?
“I mean, I feel like I also just started out,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, but every project has new challenges, so I’m always feeling like I’m doing it the first time. Try out things. Test, test, test things, prepare everything really well.
“So if you have a plan, you can always do it different on set, but try to make a good plan in advance.”
Cuckoo is in theatres this weekend.
