Halloween Special
Micha Dahan csc shoots a scene for Bed of the Dead.
Lighting the Dark By C. MCRAE, Special to Canadian Cinematographer
Credit: Nick Montgomery
T
hey are guilty pleasures we don’t like to admit indulging in – horror movies. As a teen, sitting in your best friend’s basement watching Friday the 13th (with the volume down), you’re feigning cool, but you know you’re not sleeping tonight. Why do we delight in these irrational, disturbing, almost psychologically damaging images and themes? There is an innate human fascination with horror. Chris Alexander, writer, critic, director and die-hard horror fan,
22 • Canadian Cinematographer - October 2016
elaborates: “It’s an exploitation of that basic primal, human fear. We have this perpetually underlying dread and anxiety about death and what lies beyond. Horror movies draw that to the surface and throw it in our face, where we digest it in small bites. It becomes entertainment. It’s akin to bungee jumping to the precipice of death, then we bounce back. Somehow we convince ourselves we have control.” Creating the cinematic content to fulfill this need is an exhilarating, no-
holds-barred adventure that many filmmakers embark on, and the relationship between director and DP is particularly crucial. George Mihalka (director of the cult classic slasher film My Bloody Valentine) elucidates: “A good horror film is the result of a combination of things, but creating the right mood through the cinematography is paramount. It has to feel credible. Much of this is the result of the cinematographer/director partnership. You have to find that balance. The whole point of horror films
