postPerspective Update

Antonio Campos Talks Directing
Netflix’s The Devil All the Time

By Iain Blair

Director Antonio Campos made a name for himself with his debut 2008 feature Afterschool, which premiered at Cannes and was nominated for the Caméra d'Or and Un Certain Regard awards. He followed that film with the Sundance hits Simon Killer and Christine.

Campos, who also plays in the episodic world, directed the pilot of USA’s Emmy-nominated series, The Sinner. He is currently serving as an executive producer for the show, which is ramping up for its fourth season.

His latest film, Netflix’s The Devil All the Time, is a gothic epic set in the 1940s-1960s that weaves together stories of the families, preachers, cops and killers who inhabit small towns in Ohio and West Virginia.

I recently talked to Campos about making the film, the workflow and his love of editing and post.

Can you talk about the look you and DP Lol Crawley, BSC, went for?
Lol is a master of shooting 35mm and leans into pushing the medium as far as we can. Even in our night exteriors, he underexposed and pushed the film in the processing to get grain — and just the right amount of information on the subjects — while maintaining the beautiful dark. For a film that played so much with light and dark, as is key with Southern Gothic and noir, we embraced the bright, sunlit exteriors and the moody, shadowy interiors.

Can you tell us about the post?
We finished at Technicolor’s The Mill with colorist Damien Van Der Cruyssen and mixed at Final Frame, both in New York. Editor Sofia Subercaseaux and I worked out of our home in Chile for the first cut and then finished editing the film at The Edit Center in Brooklyn.