'Barbarian' DP Zach Kuperstein Adapts his Style to the Story at Hand
Kuperstein discusses his shot preparation process, his own stylistic preferences, and how he overcame technical difficulties on 'Barbarian.'
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by Oliver Sheehan
As a director of photography, Zach Kuperstein’s first priority is the narrative at hand. Rather than impose his own stylistic preferences, he tries to act like a sponge, absorbing every reference and concept suggested by his collaborators, and engaging in a dialogue with the director. How do we define a visual arc for this film? What are the rules of the road? “It is important to set constraints on yourself in creating any part of a movie,” Kuperstein says. “Because if you just say that anything goes, you begin to make decisions just because they will look cool. You want to be making something that's an intentional decision for the story that is guided by the moment in the drama.”
Kuperstein’s chameleonic ability to adapt his style to serve different stories and different filmmakers is apparent when looking at his diverse filmography. He’s shot a kinetic, single take buddy comedy, in The Climb, a black and white horror film, in The Eyes of My Mother, and a shadowy coming-of-age drama, in Paper Spiders. But the movie Kuperstein is best known for at this point is Zach Cregger’s 2022 horror-comedy sensation, Barbarian. The film took Kuperstein from backlots in Bulgaria to Brightmoor, along the way producing a host of technical and logistical challenges. Recently, I sat down with Kuperstein to discuss his approach to cinematography — including his shot preparation process, how he overcame the technical difficulties of shooting in complete darkness for Barbarian, and his own stylistic preferences.
What did the location scouting process for Barbarian look like?
Initially, the producers and director sent me photos and various satellite views of locations in Bulgaria, where we shot. Eventually they found an agricultural laboratory where they were doing research on tomatoes. The lab owned a couple fields along this one stretch of road that had been abandoned. There was a one-story brick building on one side of the street, but the other side was just open to whatever we wanted.
A huge concern of the director was seeing the mountains in the background. We wanted it to feel like Detroit, outside of downtown but still within the city. That was something we were weighing a lot: What angles are okay to look at and what angles are not?
I was involved with designing the layout of the house facades. The production designer and I used 3D visualization techniques to create a model of what the houses would look like. We also consulted maps of the area so that we could figure out how to cheat the direction and angles of shots so that mountains were not in view.
Additionally, we needed to construct the interior of the house and the secret passages, which were all built from scratch in a studio. We saw countless 3D previews and floor plans that the production designer had drawn up. I was heavily involved in all of that, but at the end of the day, it was not my decision.
What does your hard prep look like?
The first step is to build a library of film language. It’s important to set the groundwork. And to set those constraints on yourself. Guardrails to make sure that you're staying within the vision before you get into the nitty-gritty of shot listing.
Then, shot listing is the most intense and probably the longest part of the process. I have a custom template that I've modified over the years that's a Google spreadsheet. It's useful for quickly communicating the different data points of each shot. I've also realized that people like to receive shot information in three different ways. The shot list is the text-based mode, and it works because some people prefer to read about shots. The second way would be using a blocking diagram, which is basically a top-down view of the blocking and action of the shot. Some people prefer to absorb shot information in this way, especially when it comes to scheduling. With the blocking diagram we can be as specific as possible with the shot descriptions and blocking. I like to ask a lot of detailed questions so we are doing the best we can to visualize what the camera is doing. Also, asking questions ensures the director and I are on the same page about what exactly the shot is going to be.
We're often doing all of this in tandem with location scouting. So we'll be bouncing back and forth between seeing spaces that we haven't seen before or returning to spaces that we have and deciding how it's going to work there. All the while, we are modifying our shot list based on location information, or choosing locations based on our shot list. Sometimes we design the set based on our shot list, too.
What happens after you’ve created the shot list?
After we've completed a shot list, I always go to each location and shoot photo boards of every single shot in the movie. A photo board is similar to a storyboard, but we're using a camera to take a picture in the actual location, with stand-ins. We're usually using a director's viewfinder app. There's one called CadRage and there's another one called Artemis. The apps are able to take images that simulate the field of view of a particular lens on a particular camera. So if we know what camera we're going to be shooting on and we know what lenses we have, I can say, “OK, we're going to use a Sony Venice 2 in 5.8K Super 35 mode and we're shooting in a 2.39 aspect ratio and we're using Master Primes.” The app shows you exactly what the given set up is going to look like. So that's ensuring further that the director and I are on the exact same page about what the shot is and where the camera is going to be. And it allows us to revise the plan for a third time, essentially. When we write “Close-up,” how close is that? What lens are we on? What lens it's on makes a big difference. This gives you an opportunity to experiment with different frames without the pressure of being on set. That’s the third mode of shot description. Depending on the way that someone processes information, they can choose one of these modes and easily deduce how the shot and shooting process will turn out.
And then after that, I like to have frame grabs taken from the footage that we actually shoot so that I can compare with the photo boards. Are we getting the shots we wanted? Are we able to keep continuity? Are the shots, now that we've shot them, cutting together? And, of course, there’s another opportunity to revise the plan and consider why we’re doing what we’re doing on set. The other benefit of the frame grabs is that they boost crew morale. I can show a crew member the work that we're doing easily. I just bring the image up on my phone as we're hanging out on set. I can, for example, show them how the light they set up is playing in the shot.
An important facet of the job of a director of photography is to manage the crew and get people inspired so that they can do their best work. At the end of the day, I'm middle management between the visionaries and the executors. How do we have a back-and-forth instead of a one-directional conversation?
In Barbarian, the 1980s sequences make use of a different aspect ratio and also are shot with distinct camera movement and wide angles. How were these aesthetic decisions made?
The whole look of that sequence is based on a film called Angst, which is from the early ‘80s. It's an Austrian movie about a serial killer who gets out of prison and goes on a rampage. Zach Cregger showed it to me and I was like, “The way it's shot is really interesting.” It used early versions of Snorricam and these bizarre floating overhead shots. The camera is always tracking the actor and moving close to him. And then the 4:3 aspect ratio was a visual reset, and also a reference to ‘80s TV and the fact that the character in the movie creates these videotapes in the future. We actually shot the “How to Breastfeed” video on VHS tape, too.
Do you always operate the camera?
On Barbarian, every set up was single camera, and I operated everything except for the gimbal and steadicam stuff. More recently, I have tried working with a camera operator, and have had mostly good experiences with it. I’ve met some interesting people, and seeing their approach to framing has freed me up to focus on lighting and on orchestrating managerial aspects of the shoot. It gives me some distance from what’s going on, so I can watch the image and internalize it and determine what is working and what’s not. But at the end of the day, I love operating so much.
I’m curious about the process of shooting in the tunnels in Barbarian, using flashlights as the primary light source.
When I read the script, I thought, “OK, we're going to use the flashlight in a dark space. That's going to be the only light source. First, I need a camera that can see in the dark.” So I chose the Venice, because at that time it was the leader in the low light front. So I was able to shoot at 2,500 ISO, and during tests with the camera I would send footage to Sam [Daley], the colorist I work with, to determine how far I could raise the ISO. He would tell me, “You can push it to five thousand but not ten thousand.” And knowing that was huge.
Then, I was like, “Well, I need fast lenses.” And I also wanted lenses that covered full frame, because I was interested in large format at the time, which I'm actually no longer excited about.. But I wanted to use modern lenses and have the picture feel very sharp and present. So, we chose the Supreme Primes. They were the fastest large format lenses that I could find at the time, and provided the sharp and present aesthetic that I was looking for.
What about working with the light itself?
We used a phone light and a flashlight that we had modified with a little LED disc inside the flashlight housing. We could remotely control that LED, and we altered the color of the flashlight with gels. We were able to control brightness remotely, which was helpful. At first, we thought that dispersing fog in the space would spread the light around more, but it proved to be too much. We ended up finding the sweet spot of fog, just enough so you could also see the beam of the flashlight without blowing it out. We also tested backlights and experimented with hiding little lights in the tunnel. Which did not work.
Finally, the gaffer designed a handheld LED light that was about eight inches across in diameter, and he put it inside a snoot. A snoot is an object shaped like an inverted top hat that you attach to a light in order to focus the light and prevent it from spilling. He made a little cap for the snoot so that he could cover it easily. Whenever we were in the tunnel, the actor led the way, then me with the camera behind, then the gaffer with the light behind me, and the boom operator behind him, all in a single file. The gaffer would follow the flashlight motion, pointing the light toward the wall that the flashlight was shining on. This technique would enhance the ambience from the correct side. When the actor would turn the light to face the other direction, the gaffer would cut his light by putting a cap on the snoot.
Why are you no longer excited by large format?
There was a lot of rhetoric surrounding large format suggesting that it creates a larger-than-life perspective. That rhetoric was appealing to me [on Barbarian]. But what I found is that large format creates a shallower depth of field. If you want shallower depth of field, great. If you want something else, then it’s not the right tool for that.
In general, I've recently favored deeper depth of field. I like it when we get to see the background, and we can create depth in a shot through blocking and angles. Shallow depth of field results in blurry backgrounds that make these characters feel disconnected from reality. I'd rather be placing my characters in the space, and take advantage of that. At the end of the day, large format is a tool. And you just have to decide when it's the right time to use that tool.
Who are some inspirations for you?
For Barbarian, our guiding principle of style was David Fincher in the upstairs scenes and Sam Raimi in the downstairs scenes. Fincher is so good at control and precision with the camera. We wanted to create intentional camera movement that felt invisible. And then Sam Raimi uses looser and more energetic camerawork; the camera is almost self-aware, and adds a sense of unease through its detachment from the character's movement. It's motivated more by the feeling of the character’s movement. Shifting between those two languages, between upstairs and downstairs in Barbarian, was a huge part of the aesthetic that we established.
In general, I tend to think often of Roger Deakins. It is cliché to reference him, but what I respect most about his work is his commitment to intentional storytelling. Nothing is for show and nothing is style forward, it's just elegant and beautiful and deliberate and efficient. When he shoots it seems like he has the edit in mind, and I respect that approach a lot.
Oliver Sheehan is a filmmaker and undergraduate student at Wesleyan University’s College of Film. He is an intern at Nothing Bogus.
Listings
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