By Iain Blair

Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren, ASC, has multiple award noms and wins under his belt, including an Oscar for his work on the retro-glamorous musical La La Land. His new film, Saltburn, couldn’t be more different.

Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Saltburn is a dark, psychosexual thriller about desire, obsession and murder. It follows Oxford University student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) who finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.

I spoke with Sandgren, whose credits include First Man, Babylon and American Hustle, about making the film and his workflow.

What was the appeal of doing this film?
It was two things. The script was brilliant; it was very suspenseful and exciting. I was drawn in by the buildup, how Emerald had it constructed, and I couldn’t stop reading. It was also very exciting for me because I hadn’t really done this type of film before. It was a unique story with a unique approach to this sort of psychopathic character — how you feel an affection for him, a sort of sympathy. It’s also so dark and funny.

I was also excited to talk to Emerald because of her work on Promising Young Woman, which I loved. Her directing of that film was excellent, and she was making very bold decisions. Then we had a call, and I was very impressed by her. She’s just so brilliant when she explains her vision, and you’re really drawn into her storytelling.

Tell us a bit about how you collaborated on finding the right look.
I typically don’t find the look [based on] different films. It’s more abstract than that, and a good approach is to just talk about it and see what words come up. Emerald said things like, “Desire or unachievable desire. Beauty and ugliness. Love and hate.” Suddenly you get images in your head, and one was of vampires. The family are like vampires, and Oliver is obviously a vampire who loves them so much he just wants to creep inside their skin and become them.

So there was some sort of metaphorical layer I was attracted to, and Emerald had a lot of vision already in terms of visual references — from Hitchcock movies about voyeurism to silent horror movies and Caravaggio paintings. We grounded it in some sort of gothic vampire core, but the story couldn’t just start there. We had to fool the audience a little bit and not explain that right away but have imagery that could be in that vein. The language was basically that the days could be sunny and bright and romantic, while the nights would be dangerous and dark and sexy. It was these discussions we had early on that inspired the lighting style and the compositions.

Tell us more about the composition.
Emerald wanted it to feel like the house was a dollhouse that we could peek into, and she wanted it to have a square format. It all made sense to me with that in mind, as well as the voyeuristic approach, where you focus on one singular thing more than if you go scope. It feels like you can see much more that way, so that allowed us to do things in a more painterly style. As soon as we started shooting that way, we knew we were right using an aspect ratio of 1.33×1 because we felt that we could be more expressive.

So compositions were a little bit as if you’re watching an oil painting, a classic type of composition, and we’d block the scenes within a frame like that without really cutting, or we’d go in really tight on something. It was sort of that “play with it a little bit” thing. Also, the approach is slightly artful more than cinematic. I feel like we thought of the shot list in another way here. It would be more, “How can we tell this story in a single shot, and do we need another shot, and if so, what is that?” Probably that’s just a really tight close-up. So we had a slightly different way of blocking the scenes compared to what I’ve done before. It was about creating that language, and the more you nail it before you shoot, then it solves itself while you start working on each scene.

What camera setup did you use, and what lenses?
We shot Super 35mm film in a 1.33×1 aspect ratio, which is the silent aspect ratio. We used Panavision Panaflex Millenium XL2s. It’s the same as silent movies, basically, for perf, and we used Panavision Primo prime lenses.

Did you work with your usual colorist Matt Wallach in prep?
Yes, the team was Matt Wallach (Company 3 LA) and dailies colorist Doychin Margoevski (Company 3 London). The dailies software was Colorfront’s On-Set Dailies. I have worked with Matt on dailies for many movies and lately in the DI. We set this up together, but he wasn’t able to come over to London to do the dailies, so he was involved remotely and was watching stills from the dailies Doychin did.

Tell us about your workflow and how it impacts your work on the shoot.
My workflow is always that the film gets scanned, in this case at Cinelab in London, and then developed and scanned in 4K. So it’s a final scan from the beginning, and we don’t touch the negative again. Then it goes to Company 3 for dailies. But before the dailies are distributed, the colorist sends me stills from his grading suite in dailies so I can look at the color. It’s just a few stills from the different scenes, and takes a week or two for us to dial it in. Matt gets the footage; he uses his instinct, and we apply a Kodak print emulation LUT. Then he works with the printer lights to see where he has the footage, and he does what he feels is right, with perhaps contrast or lower blacks.

He then tells me what he did, and we look at it on the stills he sends me. That’s when I’ll say go a little colder or darker or brighter or whatever. But usually after a few days we dial it in and get the look down. But, as I said, we spend a little more time in the beginning to make sure we have it right, and it also has to do with me knowing that we’re doing the right thing with the lighting — perhaps I’ll need to add more light for the next scene.

This has been our way of working since Joy in 2015, which was the first thing Matt and I worked on together with dailies. That process is really good because nowadays the iPad is like P3 color space, and it looks really good when you have it at a certain exposure, and that becomes our look. That’s why it’s so important to set that in the dailies because once we’re in the DI, I don’t want to change it. I just want to adjust things, like match the shots to each other or fix a face or do something else without changing this sort of look. The look should be there already.

That’s what I like about film too; it adds something to it. I feel like I know exactly how it’s going to look, but it looks 5% better or different with film because it gives me things that pressure me when I see it. It’s like, oh, look at the halation there, or look at those blue shadows. There’s something always going on that’s hard to actually imagine, as you don’t see it with your eyes, even if you know it’s going to be there. So that’s a nice thing. Basically, if you looked at the dailies on any of my previous films, I didn’t touch it much. That’s why I usually like having the same colorist do the dailies as the DI, but it couldn’t be helped on this one.

Dailies colorist Doychin Margoevski was great. He’s also got a great eye for darkness, and he’s not afraid of letting it be dark. So as I noted, the three of us dialed it in together initially, and then he sent stills to me and Matt, and we looked at them. That way, Matt was very familiar with the footage when we came to the DI, and he’s used to being with a timer and keeping track on the whole project. Matt also did the trailers, so all that is solid control.

I heard that you shot all the stately home interiors on location at just one house?
Yes, it was a 47-day shoot, all done in the one country house and in a nearby country estate for some exteriors, like the bridge scene. Otherwise, all the exteriors and interiors are at the same house. Then we shot at Oxford and near Oxford for some interiors, and then London. We built only one set, which was the bathroom. That was built inside of a room, and the two rooms next to it were Oliver’s and Felix’s bedrooms. They were completely painted and dressed and made up as their rooms, as they didn’t look that way at all when we came in. It’s the red corridor that was important going into the bathroom, and then the bathroom and then the rooms.

 

I assume the huge maze was mostly all VFX?
Yes, the whole maze is visual effects combined with the practical. When we’re down there walking around, it’s all practical, and we had these hedge walls that were moved around so we could get through. The center of the maze with that big statue in the middle was built by production designer Suzie Davies and her team. It was all VFX for the big, wide exterior overhead maze shot and the wide shot from the windows. VFX supervisor Dillan Nicholls and Union did all the effects.

What was the most difficult scene to shoot and why?
That’s a good question. I think the scenes of Oliver’s party. We had to be careful with the property, so we couldn’t drive around too many condors or cherry pickers, and we had to shoot different scenes over a few nights all over the place — from one end of the house to another end of the garden. We would be inside of the maze and outside at the discotheque or inside at the red staircase. And all of that had to be prelit to work 360, basically.

It was daunting to light, but we could eventually position lights and condors and sneak them in from other angles. So it was a little complicated. We had to plan it out, but thanks to the really good special effects department, we could fog it all up. Suzie Davies helped with fire flames so we could send practical lights in there to make it all look like a big party.

Are you happy with the way it turned out?
Yes, I’m really proud of it. It’s a special film for sure, and it was a really fun shoot… and different. It’s so refreshing to have a director that dares to do what you think is right, just the way you want to, so you don’t have to restrict yourself. I love working with Emerald. She’s very fun and, I think, brilliant.

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Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.