Rian Johnson has another Benoit Blanc hit on his hands wake up dead manIn which Blank deals with the strange death of a fire-and-brimstone parish priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). It’s a classic locked-room mystery in a spooky Gothic small-town setting, and Johnson turned to cinematographer Steve Yedlin (looper, The Last Jedi) to help realize their artistic vision.
(There are minor spoilers below but no major reveals.)
Yedlin worked on the last two knives out Installments. He has known Johnson since they were both teenagers, and their long-standing friendship ensures that they are on the same page aesthetically from the beginning when they work on projects.
“We don’t need to test each other,” Yedlin told Ars. “There’s no figuring out period. We use preparation time in a way that’s really efficient and makes the film better because we’re [in agreement] All the time it took us to craft, craft and hone this film, right from the first moment. We don’t waste time talking abstractly or making sure we have similar tastes. We can dive into the details of each individual scene and shot.”
This time, in keeping with a distinctly Gothic sensibility wake up dead manYedlin played with the interplay between light and darkness. For example, Johnson’s scripts sometimes required dramatic lighting changes, sometimes within the same scene. Case in point: When Vick is in the pulpit delivering his trademark hell-fire-and-brimstone sermon, the sun pops out of the clouds for a brief moment and illuminates him, before the clouds move back in to cover the sun once again. Even Blank gets a chance in the sun with his “Way to Damascus” moment just before the final performance.
“In the church, we have day, night, morning, evening,” Yedlin said. “We have morning rays coming in. As Vic’s voice gets louder, the sun comes out from behind the clouds and flashes the lens. We had custom light control software so they could control and modify all the nuances of the light and give themselves cues where it’s changing during the shot, where it’s very flexible and we can be creative in that moment. It’s very repeatable and reliable and you can just press a button and it’s on the same line. It happens the same time period every time.”
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