IBC
Tim Burton and Michael Keaton’s return to the fantasy horror comedy hit is lensed by Greek-Cypriot cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos.
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When director Tim Burton sat down with his cinematographer to discuss a sequel to 1988’s cult hit Beetlejuice he told Haris Zambarloukos BSC; ‘I’ve already made that film’.
“Obviously there’s a world already set up, there is a
precedent there but he didn’t want to breathe life into old bodies but treat
each scene of the new film on its own terms,” says the DoP of his first
experience working with Burton. Zambarloukos regularly composes films with
Kenneth Branagh including spooky house feature A Haunting in Venice
(2023). He says the Edward Scissorhands director knows what he wants.
“Tim is a man of few words but I didn’t necessarily have to
ask what he wanted. Just by knowing Tim’s films you understand the distinctive
style and you start from there. He asked me for my thoughts about things so I
did have creative freedom, notably around tests in prep.”
These tests were less about honing specific camera and
lenses (which, for the record, are Venice 2 with Panavision Ultra Panatars) and
more around defining colour and texture.
“For instance, how do we progress from a simple green glow
in the afterlife to making it more kinetic? Could we move to a space where
things had a pulse and undulated and shifted colours all the time?
“We don’t move the camera a great deal in this film but very
often there is movement in the colour and light. In the real world scenes we
chose to shoot through leaves and have dappled light where we could. There
might be a curtain rustling just to suggest something off-kilter.”
It's a simple but effective evocation of a spooky underworld
in which Zambarloukos uses pulsing greens and oranges often through a mist
which is an effect produced from butane gas.
“We used a flickering effect from a butane gas fire called
Witches Fingers which the SFX department controlled. It’s basically five copper
pipes that you could bend and manipulate to be you wanted them to be. We’d
favour anything that gave us a subliminal feeling of movement and uncertainty
in the frame.”
He adds, “In a ghost house film it is the sleight of hand
that matters. It’s all a mirage.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice revisits the Salem-esque
community of the Winter River where Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) makes a living
as a TV host from her ability to see the undead but is forced to channel her
inner goth to save her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) from purgatory. In doing
so, she reluctantly enlists the help of mischievous afterlife fixer ‘Mr Juice’
(Michael Keaton).
“I always feel that you understand what a film is going to
give you in the first ten minutes,” he says. “Here we have stop frame
animation, real life sequences and we’re immediately plunged into the afterlife
with the unfortunate death of a graffiti artist.
“By the time the film ends it has all merged. Script-wise,
the story is set over the course of Halloween - one day and night - and we
transition into the night and into the afterlife by way of exteriors shot at
twilight.
An example would be when the ‘shrink heads’ escape from the
afterlife and run out of the Deetz house. “For me when it all happily merges is
a combination of the whole design of the film. We not only have an ensemble
cast but an ensemble production crew. That’s something I’ve experienced before
including on Mamma Mia! with all the choreography but never to this
degree. It took so many kinds of performers and live SFX to pull off even the
simplest shot.”
Scenes featuring the shrink heads in Beetlejuice’s boiler
room were shot on a set large enough that Zambarloukos could frame wide shots
and still accommodate dozens of crew.
“Each of the shrink heads is a puppeteer in a suit with an
animatronic head which required one or two people on remote control servo
devices. Each of twenty puppeteers would be blindly performing in the suit
while their heads, eyes and lips are being manipulated in unison. Then we have
Keaton giving this incredibly physical performance but you’d only get 3-4 takes
max. On top of that we’d have pulsating light cues and then another 10-15 other
light cues. The pressure was on to get it all right because if one person makes
a mistake then you all have to redo.”
Zambarloukos was aided by being able to work with most of
his regular camera and light team including Gaffer Dan Lowe and key grip
Malcolm Hughes, first assistant camera Dean Thompson and Steadicam op Stamos
Triantafyllos as well as A camera operator Des Whelan who has worked with
Burton for twenty years since Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“Keaton didn’t improvise as much here as with the original
but he gives off this incredible energy on set. They rehearsed and pretty much
had [his performance] figured out before shooting. Tim doesn’t shot list but he has shots in his
head. You can always tell Tim has an idea of what he wants and he gives space
to the actors and we’ll adjust the shot according to what’s happening on the
day.”
Further tests included for infrared photography of a scene
in the ghost TV show we see near the beginning of the movie and for a black and
white sequence. The latter in particular caught Burton’s fancy as resembling
“an old-fashioned nitrate film, with glowing whites” and was coincidentally
being tested at the same as Denis Villeneuve was doing something similar
for Dune II.
Burton throws the works at the climactic scene set in a
church and including animation, puppetry and CGI in a musical number.
“We try to do as much in-camera as we can. We put
Beetlejuice in an inflated suit designed by creature effects supervisor Neil
Scanlan on a crane and raise him up and up, then CGI [led by VFX Supervisor
Angus Bickerton and the team at Framestore] comes in blows him up.”
The film’s exteriors were shot in Corinth, a town in Vermont
which was the same location as the original. Additional material was shot in Manchester-by-the-Sea,
Massachusetts, notably the scene in which Astrid cycles downhill through town
and crash lands a tree house because the geography and architecture of the
place made more sense). The graveyard scenes were filmed at West Wycombe,
Bucks; “If you think about it New England was named that way for a reason,”
says Zambarloukos. Interiors were shot at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden.
The body of photography took nine weeks but the shoot was interrupted in 2023
by the strikes.
