In some ways it seems like DP Jorel O’Dell’s path was always meant to lead to cinematography. His love of film started early while shooting 35mm stills with his dad when he was just 6 years old. “I’ve been shooting reverse negative and black-and-white my whole life,” he explains. “I learned and understood the ‘exposure triangle’ and even exposure compensation when shooting with a flash by the time I was 8 or 9 years old. This all translated wonderfully when I went to film school at 20 years old and started shooting on 16mm film.”

DP Jorel O’Dell

Along the way, O’Dell had other interests, including acting in theater, something he did all over the world. “That time was very much a study for me in directing and writing, as I was internalizing so much of these two crafts and distilling that into my own voice through performance.” While he enjoyed acting, he always felt his path was behind the camera in some way. “In film school, I only felt like we were being shown filmmaking from the perspective of the director. Often with so many classic examples of historically impactful directors being ‘auteur,’ I found this later to be more destructive than helpful in what I see now as being the absolute most collaborative form of art.”

This all laid a perfect foundation for O’Dell’s path to cinematography. “Eventually I had a camera that could also shoot HD video, and I started shooting projects for actor friends of mine. I realized I had the skills necessary to achieve successful results there. I threw myself fully into this position on set, and so many opportunities came my way. I just never stopped learning or experimenting with new ideas with lighting and camera movement. It became my obsession.”

DP Jorel O’Dell

While his CV is long and includes films (The Birthday Cake), TV series (Made From Scratch) and commercials (Lauren Conrad Collection), one particular film stands out. In the Sonny Mallhi-directed horror film Hurt, released last month, Tommy returns home from military deployment to surprise his wife, Rose. He seems to be suffering from PTSD but is still eager to go to the couple’s favorite Halloween attraction, the Haunted Hayride. Seems like a great idea, right? Well, in addition to Tommy’s shaken and traumatized emotional state, a masked killer is hunting for victims at the hayride.

The film originally premiered in 2018 at the Fantasia Fest, but the director did a recut, which is the version available now on Amazon. “I am so proud of Sonny for making this cut,” O’Dell says. “There are some really creative story edits that just make the emotional ride fall into place. It is a strong film now.”

Hurt

Let’s find out more from O’Dell about Hurt and how he likes to work…

How would you describe the look of Hurt?
The look of Hurt is absolutely filmic, dark and terrifying. I felt my job was to stay out of the way entirely. I lit every moment to feel realistic, rural and seamless. I wanted my work to be invisible. Stylistic and illustrative choices are not a good fit for a film like this. Two of Sonny’s very few broad-stroked references were Chinatown and Texas Chainsaw, with Texas being the stronger of the two.

I shot on my ARRI Alexa Mini and pushed to use an UltraScope anamorphic lens for beautiful texture, spherical aberration, skin tones and flares. I usually don’t like the general meandering choice to use flares just because they’re “cool.” I protected the lens for the most part and very selectively let the flares rip in a few choice moments.

Jorel O’Dell

What about your lenses?
The budget was so tight that I was only allowed to have one lens, so I picked the 40mm, of course. I brought along a 6-foot soft-edge graduated (.9 for the nerds), which ended up living on my lens for day exterior setups and helped create an oppressive feeling to the frame at monitor.

Also, I found it fitting that Chinatown had also been shot primarily with only one lens, a 40mm anamorphic, and that was a reference of Sonny’s, so that felt like we were getting on the same page. That was how I helped sell the idea of anamorphic for the project. And I really had to sell it. (Laughs). It took a while to get a yes on that, but I’m so happy I did.

We had two other lenses donated to us from a dear friend of mine, Felix Pineiro, who happened to recommend me for the job in the first place and was one of the editors. He gave us his 65mm and 135mm Leica Macro Rs, which I used for the close- ups. I protected those frames from spectral highlight and bokeh in the background and foreground in hopes of not taking the viewer out of the anamorphic atmosphere.

Hurt

It’s always a dance using mixed format, as post production should know ahead of time that we’ll have to crop spherical footage to match the 2.39 we’re planning to deliver in. That all worked out quite well in the end.

What did your lighting package look like for Hurt?
Minimal! I mean, it could have been worse, I suppose, but we originally shot this five years ago, before most LEDs had taken over the planet.

I had two 9-light Molefays. That saved my butt. Then two M18s, four 650s, one 4×4 Kino bank, about $200 worth of flood lights and a mix of tungsten bulbs I sourced from Home Depot once we had finished scouting all the locations. What we mostly didn’t have was hands. I worked with a 1×1 G&E crew, if you call that a crew. I call it two guys! (Laughs)

Any tips for other DPs who have limitations on equipment and a project that takes place mainly at night?
Ah, yes. Well, it’s a drastically different world now thanks to LED technology. For example, I have built my own custom lights with Johnathan Cushing from Cush Light that weigh mere ounces, run off nickel battery barrel taps and can be controlled diode by diode in DMX control. I can’t recommend Cush Light enough as a go-to source for bespoke LED builds and the countless other light sources available, like Astera, Aputure, Astra, SkyPanel, Creamsource, Dedolight, etc. These have all changed the game.

Hurt was a challenge that my crew and I will simply never, ever have to face again. No production should have to face what we did simply because easier tools exist now, and they’re less expensive, very reliable and far more mobile and flexible.

Hurt

The film’s director, Sonny Mallhi, likes unconventional framing. Is there a shot in the film that was outside of the box for you?
I absolutely love the opportunity and freedom to explore framing, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to jump right in with bells on. But there is one scene in the backyard when Rose’s sister and husband come over just after Tommy gets back. The entire scene is shot in only extreme closeups.

I could not understand why Sonny was adamant about shooting this one scene this way, but now I see it cut together, and it’s incredible. It is subjective entirely to Tommy’s experience. Perhaps this is the first civilian gathering he’s had since the hell of war had its way with him. He suffers the first PTSD panic attack that we see here, and the conversation in the scene is all but meaningless, except for the tones of jealousy that we start to feel from Tommy. He’d been gone so long that another man, Rose’s sister’s husband, had all that time to get close to his wife. It’s crazy to think this way, but that’s what mental illness can induce in people, and I could feel those wheels turning in his head as I watched it.

Hurt

The coverage Sonny had me get was just incredible, in my opinion. I’ve never seen a scene quite like this, and it set me up early in the film to feel that this character was very dangerous. I love this setup structurally in the script, and even more in our execution of it, thanks entirely to the vision Sonny had.

Did you use a LUT? Did you work with a colorist?
It was shot with a filmic LUT that I built for us. I am still a film-oriented kind of shooter, so I always try to get my image as close to what the director loves as I can on the shoot day. I ultimately set the look there and with my contrast in lighting each scene. I think it’s well worth the time to shoot lens tests in appropriate light with as much design as is available: actor, makeup, wardrobe, hair and location, if possible. We had this opportunity to a certain extent, and it didn’t seem to matter a ton to Sonny. It felt like he was happy with it but kind of just categorized it as something that would take care of itself later. There were more pressing issues to solve at that time, and great pressures were building up. So I just went with it. I knew this project was going to be different than most other films.

I’m not sure if the budget is public knowledge or not, so I’ll just say that it was the lowest-budget film I’ve ever worked on. It is rather unthinkable that we could make a film of this caliber with next to no budget. It’s actually amazing to me, and I’m really proud of what Sonny accomplished in the end result.

Jorel O’Dell

Sadly, I was not a part of the color workflow. I don’t know who it was or what they used. But it was already very close to what I had delivered on set. Ultimately, the colorist did exactly what I had hoped for with an unsettling patina, slightly de-sat, crunchy look that mitigated the green channel. Ultimately, both Sonny and I had agreed that we were going to dirty up the green no matter what. Because it’s Halloween night in the film, we knew October trees were our end goal.

I can say that I’m very happy with the color. It’s about a stop to a stop-and-a-half under where I shot it, so I might have asked for a little bit more out of the toe of the curve (ha!), but it works so well in the film that I’m just happy all around.

Is there a director or showrunner that you would like to work with that you haven’t gotten a chance to yet?
Oh, there are so many that it’s hard to keep track. I just finished shooting as second unit DP and A camera operator on a Cassian Elwes production with director Gigi Gaston and DP Byron Werner. It’s called Nine Bullets. I’d love to continue working with them in any fashion.