'The Watchers', Cinematographer, Eli Arenson

0:00Eli ArensonWe do have a lot of sets in our film, but mostly I think it was probably 80%, 70%, 80% shot on location. And I was a big proponent at first of like, why are we doing this to ourselves? Why are we shooting on location? It's gonna be really difficult. We could, we could do this on a stage. But Ishana, it was very important for her to get the realism of being on location with the difficulties, and I kind of vibed with her. It also creates limitations to a certain extent that you have to work with.

0:39Jawad MirThank you for working on The Watchers. From a purely from a cinematography standpoint, it definitely has a very specific tone and feel to it. And I'll just sort of dive right into it. How did you come on board The Watchers?

0:57Eli ArensonI was hit up by Ishana while I was in the middle of a, of another production that was shooting. I live in Iceland, so I was in Iceland on a project and, I can't remember exactly how it was initiated, but I had this one meeting with Ishana and it felt really good. Like, it was a really nice meeting. She seemed super lovely and, we just kinda spoke as friends really in our first meeting.

1:26Eli ArensonIt just felt like a, it could be a really nice collaboration.

1:30Jawad MirRight.

1:31Eli ArensonAnd we took it from there, and I read the script and I thought the script was really interesting and had a lot of potential. And then, and then, yeah, and then I joined her. I had a quick meeting with her father, like a week or so after that. And then, yeah, and then I came on board, and it was a pretty quick turnaround 'cause I think, I finished that production that I was on while being interviewed for The Watchers, and then I think it w… I had about two weeks off before coming straight to Ireland to meet them in person and start scouting all the locations there.

2:06Jawad MirLovely. So you being from Ireland, the film sets in Ireland, it's... I'm assuming based on what you just said, it's shot in Ireland.

2:14Eli ArensonYeah. I'm, I'm from Iceland, not from Ireland.

2:16Jawad MirIceland. S…

2:17Eli ArensonYeah

2:17Jawad Mir... Sorry I mis… misheard you. I apologize.

2:18Eli ArensonNo worries.

2:19Jawad MirIceland.

2:19Eli ArensonYeah, no worries.

2:20Jawad MirBut the fact that the film was shot in Ireland and set in Ireland, what was your location scouting like? Because I know the finding locations, the right location is the challenging part, and forest itself looks pretty much more or less the same, but this particular film had a certain feel and elements to it. May it be real or may it be s… some of it on sound stage. Just kinda run through that process for me.

2:46Eli ArensonWell, the first thing that I happened before I even came to Ireland is I had a call with, the executive producer, Jo Homewood…

2:55Jawad MirOkay

2:56Eli Arenson... Who's fantastic. She was the producer on Banshees of Inisherin, and she's a really lovely lady. And she was like our kind of Irish producer, you know? So she knew all the ins and outs. So the first c… phone call with her was very funny because she was like, "You know that Ireland doesn't really have that many forests." And I was like, "Oh, really?" She's like, "Yeah, we have a few patches here and there, but we're really gonna have to tie in these multiple spots and make it feel bigger than it is." So I was like, "Oh, cool." So when we went there, Ishana had already got some photos from a location scout that was there. So we dived right in and we went, I think the first place that we went to see was the main woods that you see in most of the film, which are these really tall, dead looking, dense trees.

3:40Jawad MirRight.

3:40Eli ArensonBut we were a little bit worried that it would be a little bit monotonous to be constantly in there, in those woods, so we tried to find some other areas, that looked different but still had this kind of magical quality to them.

3:58Eli ArensonSo for instance, the, these kinda mossy woods that sometimes appear in the scenes with Ciara where her burrow is, which are more green but it feels almost like a, like weeping willows. The moss is just like hanging off the branches. That was found by Ishana actually just on the side of the road. She was talking to our driver…

4:18Jawad MirOh, really?

4:19Eli Arenson... "Oh, can you stop here for a second? There's something I think interesting over there." We just stopped off and we just went up this ditch and there was this magical little thing right there off the side of the road. It was very small, and you could maybe have one spot that you stand in the middle that you could look around yourself and be like, "Okay, this looks kind of endless." But it was very, everything was cheated quite a bit. The woods were all quite small…

4:43Jawad MirRight

4:43Eli Arenson... But none of them were very accessible. They were all pretty tricky to gain access to for all the, you know, trucks and equipment and all these kinda things. And a big, and a big chunk of the location scouting was also spent on the, house at the end of the film.

5:01Eli Arenson... We probably scouted about 20 homes to find the right one, and it changed versions and it was, you know, from kinda pretty run-down little houses to these more grandiose things and there was kind of an... I don't know. We were really playing with that idea of how this would look. And I'm, I'm kinda happy that it ended up with something super modernist and clean and shiny 'cause it's just totally different, you know? So it's like either you could, it could be good or it could be bad, but it's definitely making a statement by going so…

5:32Jawad MirYeah

5:33Eli Arenson... Modern all of a sudden, and not like something, wooden and shabby and kind of natural looking. So that was kind of interesting.

5:42Jawad MirYeah. Without talking about the film or the ending or anything like that, the house that you're talking about, I actually felt that…

5:52Eli ArensonYeah

5:52Jawad Mir... When that scene came up that how... Like, I felt its pre… It was its own character.

5:57Eli ArensonYeah.

5:58Jawad MirRight? Like, you could, you could definitely feel that. In terms of… The tone of the film, the lighting of the film. You know, I asked this from Yob as well from an editing standpoint. You know, the film… When you see the trailer and you know, from the marketing standpoint you see from producer M. Night Shyamalan and director Ishana Shyamalan, you know, the first thing that comes to your mind, "Okay, this is gonna be like the same kind of a feel as your M. Night Shyamalan films are over the last twenty-four years." but I said this to Yob as well, even though there was that slight element there, I saw and I noticed a lot of Ishana's own voice in the film, and her style and her approach. What kind of communication she had with you, if at all, aside from like, you know, what her trans… putting her vision out to you and translating it into screen, like was there any conversation like, "Let's not do this," or, "Let's try to avoid that," not to make su… to make sure that it doesn't look like, you know, XYZ from her dad's film or anything like that?

7:04Jawad MirOr was there complete… completely different conversation?

7:07Eli ArensonYeah. We never, we never really talked about her dad's work. I mean…

7:12Jawad MirHardly

7:12Eli Arenson... Her dad mentioned her, like, you know, Night mentioned his work a couple of times.

7:17Jawad MirRight.

7:17Eli ArensonEspecially in regards to… I remember one conversation in regards to, shooting on location, which, you know, 'cause, 'cause we do have a lot of sets on our film. But mostly I think it was probably eighty percent, seventy percent, eighty percent shot on location. And I was a big proponent at first of like, why are we doing this to ourselves? Why are we shooting on location? It's gonna be really difficult. We could, we could do this on a stage. But Ishana, it was very important for her to get the realism of being on location with the difficulties, and I kind of vibed with her. It also creates limitations to a certain extent that you have to work with. So that was like a thing that she tried to, I think, steer the ship into that kind of realm. Which was good. I know that originally they wanted to build the whole coop, you know, that whole structure in…

8:20Jawad MirYeah

8:20Eli Arenson... In the woods, which they did. But, I was a big proponent of like, I'm just, you know, I'm down, but I don't see why all these interior things have to be done in the middle of the woods. It's gonna rain on us, it's gonna, you know, there's gonna be problems. It'll be really limiting in terms of how I could light it. And also that conversation kind of rather than me coming in and being like, "Oh, I don't wanna do this, I wanna do that," I just kinda came up with references of like, oh, this is something that I'm thinking of how it looks inside the coop. What do you think? And then if it's a yes, then I need this, and that, you know, to do it. So we ended up doing a lot of scenes that were like split between stage and location work, and they were like kinda comped together. So obviously all the interiors of the coop, you know, the structure in the woods were shot…

9:17Jawad MirRight

9:18Eli Arenson... And the exteriors, it was like comped in and so were a lot of the burrows. You see it in the trailer where she's going down the hole and you look up. It was shot in sections, you know. We would shoot the upper part in the real woods, and then the shaft we would call it, was one set built on a certain stage, and then the down, the bottom kind of crevice was in another stage. But sometimes there's shots that see all three, you know, where the camera goes from the top and goes through and, you know, passes through multiple sets. So that was all like a kinda jigsaw puzzle that we had to put together.

9:53Jawad MirRight.

9:53Eli ArensonBut she was very well prepared when I joined the project in terms of, how she wanted to shoot it, in terms of a shot list. She had this very, precise vision, which was, really nice for me to come in because I could just tell exactly what it is that she wants and what her drive is, and we adapted it from there. But she definitely had a really clear visual vision. I think she really enjoys shot listing, she really enjoys storyboarding. So I just came in as like a sort of a partner in crime and a guide and, you know, we could talk about it, and she had someone to bounce ideas off of other than just herself and her storyboard artist, that we could really kind of try to figure out why it is that we're doing what we're doing rather than just, you know, because it's, you know, cool. Like it looks nice or something like that. We could like, you know, why is it that it's working? Like let's translate the feeling that you get into words. So it was… We had a lot of sessions talking about the shots and stuff, so it was fun.

10:57Eli ArensonShe's a really visual person. I haven't worked with her father, so I don't know if he's the same or not. But, she was very in tune with like, very high visual vocabulary. It was nice.

11:11Jawad MirNice. You know, a comment before a question. You talked about, Ishana's vision of shooting as much as possible in real location, and I'm so glad that she was advocating that because the feel that you get in the opening of the film right off the bat, right, the opening scene, like you wouldn't get that if it was, you know, like a small set or if it was visual effects, you know, screens or whatnot, LED screen. But it was just so authentic and so real in, from a standpoint of location. And obviously the production designing itself, like, you know, that comes in later in the film, was really well done. Going back to what you said about M. Night Shyamalan referencing his films, if you can talk a bit about that, like what was that context about? Like was he giving examples to you or…

12:01Eli ArensonHe didn't talk… Like all I remember is literally all I'm say… There was one conversation and it stuck with me, and I thought it was kinda interesting and that was like the end of it for me in terms of that topic 'cause it started with looking for, not for woods or anything like that, with this home, and we discussed whether we should build it or not. You know, there was some conversation happening with the producers of, like, the cost. You know, comparing the cost of shooting on location, having a family move out for X amount of weeks so the art department can dress it, like the cost of that and the rental versus just building it. You know what I mean? And Ishana was like, "I don't wanna build it." I worked on, maybe it's because I've, I worked on Servant, and it, and it's like I'm kinda tired of working on location. And then her father said something that stuck with me. He said it to Ishana, but it stuck with me. He was like, "Do you remember in The Sixth Sense, can you guess, like, which of those houses were sets and which were shot on location because it's kinda like a 50/50? So can you tell by watching Sixth Sense what it is?"

13:04Eli ArensonAnd then I suddenly thought about it that, you know, I'm of the age that I remember watching Sixth Sense as a kid and having a huge impact on me, and I never for once doubted the fact that this was shot on a stage. Th… that's kinda like thing that I know of now is like, you know, growing up and working as a cinematographer. So then I was like, "Oh, yeah," you know? I second, you know, what Night is saying. It's like it's really just how you light it. You know what I mean? You could make it look real if it's lit to look real. So that was kind of interesting. But, you know, push come to shove, we ended up shooting on location, so... And it worked out, so it was great.

13:42Jawad MirThat's an interesting point by Shyamalan, M. Night Shyamalan, about Sixth Sense because n… you, until now, you just mentioned it. It, you know, sometimes you think about how much of a film was shot on a set versus real location, like some films just do that.

13:55Eli ArensonYeah.

13:55Jawad MirWith that film, I've never, ever thought about where it was shot or... All I know it was, like, in Philadelphia where he grew up. Like, that's all I know.

14:04Eli ArensonYeah.

14:05Jawad MirBut it, that's, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool…

14:08Eli ArensonYeah

14:08Jawad Mir... The fact that he said that. You know, f… from the standpoint of the actual feel, visual feel of the film, the texture, the tone, was there any references, nothing to do with her dad's film, we're gonna, we're not gonna talk about that, just in general that she kinda came up to you and said, "This is the kind of feel that I want," just as an examples, or c… maybe you had some suggestions. What was that collaborative effort like just to get the feel and the tone right visually?

14:40Eli ArensonWe had a whole slew of references that were taken from, all sorts of sources, from highbrow art, lowbrow art, films, anime, comics. All sorts of things that we would sort of, you know, I would print everything out and put it up in a big office and I would just, you know, once everything is done, we would just stand in front of it and we would make a sort of mishmash blend of everything. But it's, it, we knew that we wanted it to have a stylized feel to it. It wasn't like pure realism and had this fantasy element to it. But by analyzing many photographs and stuff like that, we were able to, like, break it apart and reverse engineer how to achieve that sort of look.

15:34Eli ArensonSo there isn't one example in particular that I can remember right now. I remember all sorts of references. I remember that none of the references of woods, movies that were shot in the woods were, stuck with us. Let's put it that way. It was always other things. It was always like…

15:52Eli Arenson... Oh, this would look really cool, now put that image into the woods. How do we achieve that? And, you know, that led us to decide to shoot almost everything day for night in the woods, where we did a lot of tests on and a lot of manipulations of the color and the look and stuff to get it to where we wanted it. But this idea of having a constant shroud of mist everywhere, and that the night scenes you just see infinitely, it never kind of fades to black. It just keeps going and going and going. Those were all derived from looking just at images and, you know, saying, "How do we achieve that?" And then we went to the woods with a camera and we shot it at night and during the day, and with smoke and without smoke, and we would go and we'd look at it. And, everybody in the, in the team was very, positive about that kinda testing process to find the look that we wanted. And, the same thing happened with the interior of the coop, which is like the polar opposite of that kinda smoky, bluish kinda hue of the woods, was the, that kinda yellow, kinda honey tone sort of feel of light in the coop.

17:11Eli ArensonBecause in the script and in the novel, it's described as spotlights that they… ... Walk into this shed and then there's suddenly these ch, these spotlights turn on. And I was like, "Okay, I get it, but personally, I'm just saying, spotlights I don't think l… look very nice." Not that I think that it has to be like a beauty light or anything like that, but spotlights are quite harsh and they create quite harsh shadows, especially if they're coming from above. And isn't the whole idea of... Well, I won't spoil the film, but once you kinda, this idea of being watched, I was like, this should look like a vanity sh… like a storefront shop. Like, what is it called? The windows in a storefront where they have everybody kind of on display, and the lighting is very perfect and it fills in all the wrinkles and all the cracks and, you know, so everything is visible, so you look at the details and the fiber of the clothes and all these kind of things. So I was like, why don't we take a different approach than the spotlights? And one reference that stood out was, think it was, Was it, was it Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner?

18:28Eli ArensonThere's some scenes…

18:29Jawad MirYeah

18:29Eli Arenson... In the, in this, what was it, Jared Leto? I can't remember. There was some kind of underground sort of pyramid layer or something that had this honey-toned soft s… like source…

18:43Jawad MirRight

18:43Eli Arenson... From nowhere. You have no idea where it came from. It came from where the music came from. And that was like... And I remember there was like this image with a naked body standing in there, and it felt very kind of on display. And that was like this sort of go-ahead to let's try this, and that led to a whole other series of tests that we had instead of in the woods, we had in the studio of what this structure would look like. And at the end of the day, the light that is emanating in the coop isn't what is physically there. It's this source. The whole ceiling is... It was built by the production designer out of concrete and this really heavy, huge thing, but at the end of the day, we never even used it. We just took the ceiling out, and there was this huge light source that would just fill everything in. So it would come in under your eyes and wrap in, and it would bounce from the mirror, and it just filled everything with this polar opposite hue of what the woods were to create that contrast between that kind of fantasy blue look outside and this kinda honey-toned color inside.

19:47Eli ArensonSo it was like a fun process of discovery. We didn't have this at the first meeting, you know, Ishana and I. It was like a slow kind of testing and looking at images, and our designer would Photoshop images together, and we would get kind of a sense. And we're like, "Oh, that's kinda cool. Let's, let's go for that."

20:06Jawad MirThat's pretty awesome, man. You know, working with Ishana, she's just, she's still young. Like, I think, I w… I was talking to Yob and, I mean, she looked young to me, but he told me that she was 24 when the film, just came out, or 25, give or take.

20:21Jawad MirAnd to have leadership skills and to run a film set, just because of my own experience i, in directing films, is not an easy task when you are even in your 40s or 30s or 50s. It's, it's a, it's a big production, right? Like, you just have to ma… make sure every… you have to steer the ship. You're the captain of the ship.

20:43Eli ArensonYeah.

20:43Jawad MirAnd there's a lot of pre… there's a lot of pressures. There's a lot of pressures, and you have to deal with it every day, every minute, every hour. Doing that at the age of 25, yes, her dad is a producer. Yes, her dad is a established filmmaker. But having more so that pressure of her dad being a producer and making sure that you don't screw this up, not for anybody other, any other reason but, you know, for your own debut film, what was she like on the set in terms of her confidence level and her, in terms of captaining the ship that you guys were all part of?

21:20Eli ArensonShe was fantastic, and I couldn't think for a moment that she was the age that she actually was, you know? It was the same comment that I had when I first heard about the project and heard that I was having a meeting with her. I was like, "Wait a minute. Who is this?" And I was like, whoa, I think she was 23 or something at the time. I was like…

21:40Jawad MirYeah

21:40Eli Arenson... Oh. I remember myself at 23, you know?

21:43Jawad MirYeah.

21:43Eli ArensonI remember the films that I made at that time and the mistakes that I made at that time. Do you know what I mean? That I grew from.

21:49Jawad MirYeah. Of course.

21:50Eli ArensonAnd so you come, you come with that to the table, but the minute you start talking to her, the amount of preparation and work and how, you know, ready she is, I haven't seen it from directors that are in their 60s. Do you know what I mean? She comes with so much, like, professional attitude to it and in such a positive way that as a leader, which she definitely was the leader, she would… she w… wasn't, you know, a sort of, kinda like force that was like, nobody can step on my toes, something like that. She would listen, but she also wasn't wishy-washy. Like, she knew what she wanted to do. She would listen to other people's opinions, take them, not take them, and she made the film that she wanted to make, you know? And she surrounded herself by a team of people that were lifting her vision up further.

22:51Eli ArensonSo she was awesome as, you know, the captain of the ship. Like, I really, I just hope that it doesn't go away with her, you know? As she, as you know, she makes more films and stuff, but it was absolutely wonderful collaboration with her.

23:08Jawad MirYou know, it's, it's interesting you mention that. So, you know, we all have our views about films. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I, from a standpoint of few things which I'm not gonna talk about because that's not the purpose of this conversation, it's, I felt that the film was missing a few things, but that being said, I genuinely feel the way... I mean, even without hearing from you or even ta… without, before talking to Yob, y… you could tell that, you know, as a, as a storyteller, you could tell that how much confidence she has because it translates. It translates into the visual. It translates into the story. Yes, there's always issues with, you know, stories and thing, but it, she, I feel regard… even if she makes the next film and it tanks and it does terrible, I seriously feel that she has the ability of telling amazing stories, not because her dad is there, just because I think it comes natural to her.

24:07Jawad MirAnd that's just what, based on what I saw. So, you know, she, it's not easy to captain the ship at the age of 24.

24:14Eli ArensonNo.

24:15Jawad MirIt's not easy. I mean, I remember, like you said, I remember my time. It w… I was not like that at that age so it's amazing that she is.

24:22Eli ArensonYeah, and it's, and it's not easy to stick to your guns, do you know what I mean? It's like…

24:26Jawad MirYeah

24:26Eli Arenson... I came in with my ideas regarding, you know…... Stuff, you know, in the shot list and, you know, I had a moment where I spoke to her, which I love. This is part of how open she is. You know what I mean? And what a great kinda leader she is in terms of kind of just being honest and just being real and, you know, you following her at the end, not because you're afraid, because you wanna just do it. Do you know what I mean? You wanna support that vision. 'Cause I remember I came in and I was like, "Wow, there's, this is a lot," you know, in this, in this movie visually speaking. Like, there's a lot of crane shots and a lot of circular dollies, and a lot of movement and a lot of stuff. And n… you know, my project prior to this that was released was this, film called Lamb, which was very minimal. You know, where the camera I think was just on a tripod with no panning or tilting for the first, like, 40 minutes or something. You know, very s… stationary and static. I was like, "Why on earth did you call me for a project that's so, is grandiose with so much, stuff going on?"

25:28Eli ArensonAnd she was like, "Exactly." She said, "Exactly because you were, you... I needed, you know, a yin to my yang," you know? I needed someone to come in and, you know, be the opposite force. So do you know what I mean? Did that mean that I came in and changed everything that she didn't, she wanted to do? No. We did pretty much, like, what her vision was. But, you know, she had this partner that she could listen to that would, you know, voice to her, "Hey, what if we, you know, try it from this other angle?" and stuff like that. And she did that, you know, with myself, and she did that I'm sure with Job, and she did that with a lot of people. She would really engage with people that she felt were outside of her sphere. You know, she didn't, she didn't let's say hire down, so to speak. Do you know what I mean? She took people with, different degrees of kind of, sensibilities I think than she had in order to grow. Do you know what I mean? And we didn't, and she never let us, like, shift the tone of what she wanted to make or the story that she wanted to make.

26:31Eli ArensonBut that's kinda the thing. She was very good at navigating a film period, and also a film of this scale with this such complexity and stuff. 'Cause it was a very complicated film to achieve also.

26:46Jawad MirRight. In terms of lens selection… ... Right? E… e… every director has a different approach. And, what were the conversations about going with... I mean, I could, I could take a guess what lens you guys used or what kind of, like, focal length you guys were on. But you tell me. Like, you know, what was…

27:09Eli ArensonYeah

27:09Jawad Mir... What were the conversations before production, like how we're gonna achieve this?

27:13Eli ArensonWhat's your guess? I'm just curious before I tell you.

27:16Jawad MirI would like to guess that mostly you guys shot between 28 and 50.

27:22Eli ArensonInteresting. I don't think we ever…

27:26Jawad MirI…

27:26Eli Arenson... Shot wider than 50.

27:27Jawad MirReally?

27:28Eli ArensonYeah. But we did use the Alexa 65, so it's a little bit, it's a little bit…

27:34Jawad MirThe kind of cropping factor?

27:35Eli ArensonYeah, it's like everything is wider, right? A 50 on the 65 is maybe, like, a 35 or something. I don't know.

27:43Jawad MirBecause the, with 50 you get a lot, a depth of field, right?

27:46Eli ArensonYeah.

27:46Jawad MirLike, very strong depth.

27:47Eli ArensonYeah.

27:47Jawad MirBut I didn't, I didn't feel that much as far as my memory can remember.

27:52Eli ArensonYeah.

27:52Jawad MirLike, at…

27:53Eli ArensonI think our favorite lens was the 85 for almost everything.

28:00Jawad MirInteresting.

28:02Eli ArensonFor most everything.

28:03Jawad MirWhat…

28:03Eli ArensonA lot of the woods…

28:05Jawad MirGo on, sorry

28:05Eli ArensonSo her father shot second unit. And then…

28:08Jawad MirOh, he did?

28:09Eli ArensonHe did. And by second unit it's kind of, it's not all the shots that you'd expect second unit to do, but it's, it's often characters running from the back or, like, feet in the mud or, like, kind of things like this wh… anything that didn't really involve an actor. Not all of it, but s… some of those.

28:30Jawad MirRight.

28:30Eli ArensonAnd it was funny because we would,.. The Chiamans have this tradition that they watch dailies at the end of the day, like old school, where you gather in a room, all the heads of department, and you watch, like, yesterday's work, you know, and have sushi or whatever, you know? And talk about, you know, oh, this is good, this is not good, which is a really cool process. And we'd watch footage from the second unit and I was like, "Wow, it's so wide, the lenses they're using." I was the same as you. I was like, "All 28 to 35 and stuff, and we've never gone wider than a 50. It looks so different." But I kinda like the combo of the two, so again, you asked what the difference is in their visual aesthetic. Like, that's I think definitely a thing. Ishana and I l… had this tendency of this more voyeur longer lens, you know, where the camera was further away. Whereas…

29:17Jawad MirYeah

29:17Eli Arenson... It was more kinda up and close in these kinda wide vignettes, so it was kinda fun. But we shot with the Alexa 65. The first conversation that I had with Ishana, we were both in agreement. I read the script and I was like, I, this is a 69 movie or, like, a 185, film. Like, this isn't…

29:35Jawad MirRight

29:36Eli Arenson... Even though this is a film for cinema and I love Interscope and I mostly use anamorphic lenses for the projects that I do, and as much as it ha… it breaks my heart to say it, like, this is a movie for height. Do you know what I mean? It's all the trees…

29:50Jawad MirYeah

29:50Eli Arenson... And them go…

29:50Jawad MirYeah

29:50Eli Arenson... Hooking down into the holes, and the structure and, you know, we designed the window of the structure to be the same aspect ratio as the film. And, like, all these things where, like, it has to be, 185. So from there we took the conversation. I was like, "Okay, let's look at the Alexa 65," and we looked also at some other stuff, and we even dangled the idea of shooting on film, which is something that, her father and her are used to. Unfortunately film, I kind of put my foot down and said, like, it's, I can't do film, not at, on real locations in the woods like this. Like, it was so dark in those woods.

30:28Jawad MirYeah.

30:28Eli ArensonWe'd need, like, it would be, just absolutely be a logistical nightmare and it'll slow us down. That's, I was just like, "Forget about it." And then, We tested a whole bunch of stuff, and I ended up going to London to Arri, and I think we tested every lens that they had, and we ended up with this set of lenses that I've never heard of called the Vegas. TL… TLS Vegas.

30:58Jawad MirI've never heard of them either

30:58Eli Arenson... They're pretty new, and I tried to find information on them, and there isn't much. They're not horribly expensive lenses. I think what they are from... I really dug into research. The only thing I could find out about them, and that the guys at Arri could tell me, was that they're medium format Nikon lenses from the '80s or something like that, and they were re-housed into these full-frame lenses. They don't fully cover the 65, but they cover the, enough. You could crop, like I think we cropped in like 5% or something. We took like a tiny little bit just so there isn't too much black vignette in. And they're very fast and they're very small, and they were just used on the Bong Joon Ho film, on Mickey 17. They just came back from that Darius Khondji shot. And they were, and the guys at Arri was like, "You should try these out." So th… those were not the lenses that I thought we were going to get. I had an idea in mind with this lens test.

31:59Eli ArensonI was just kind of painting by numbers, and I was like, I'm gonna go do the homework, shoot it, showcase it to Ishana, you know, screen it, and then we'll decide together, right? And then, you know, I went through the things, and these are like the D… DNA lenses that are very famous, and these are the Leica lenses that are really famous. And oh, by the way, there was these crazy lenses. I don't think you're gonna like these. Do you know what I mean? 'Cause they are a little funky. And then she was like, "Oh, I love those." The weird like lenses 'cause they have this... I… if you don't see it back to back, it's hard to describe, but they have this super high contrast, really shallow depth of field, and kind of not... They're, they're really high contrast, but they're not very sharp. They have this really kind weird thing going on with them. And they do vignette quite a bit. And they have…

32:50Jawad MirOh, yeah

32:51Eli Arenson... Artifacts that are kind of not good. Do you know what I mean? But they're cool. And she was like, "I love those lenses." And I was like, "You know what? I kind of like kind of love them, but I'm also kind of a little bit scared of them because no one's really used them before." And, you know, but we just kind of did another test with them, and then we like decided these are the ones, and that's what we used. On our A camera was the Alexa 65, which was great. So like I said, like an 85 millimeter would look more like a 50 in terms of what it…

33:22Eli Arenson... And then we had another Mini for like whatever other things that we needed to do if we had to fit into a hole in the ground or, I don't know, if it was on a wire or all sorts of like things like that. Yeah, and that's what we used. So…

33:36Jawad MirThat's so cool. I was just looking at the lenses on the toolens.co.uk, and they just have that vintage feel. Like I could just look at them, and I could feel that these are not like, you know, something that was just designed yesterday and with new elements and new thing. It, you could feel that these have that look. And one of the things I did feel, guess before you even said it was vignette that it, they're probably able to shoot really good vignette stuff. So awesome. That's, that's really cool to know. I'm actually gonna forward this off to my DP as well just to see…

34:07Eli ArensonYeah

34:07Jawad Mir... If we can try to grab a…

34:08Eli ArensonThey're cool. And they're not, and they're not horribly expensive either. I think they're just not really known yet. So people are like, "What?"

34:19Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

34:19Eli ArensonThere's no…

34:20Jawad MirI see

34:20Eli Arenson... Heard of them, but I think, you know, after this film now and when Mickey 17 comes out with also shot half of their film on it, I think they'll probably become more popular and more pricey.

34:31Jawad MirYeah. It takes, it takes a couple of films for, like major films for people to catch on, right? So…

34:36Eli ArensonYeah, exactly, and be like, "I want this." You know, like now everybody wants the Dune lens or whatever, which is this super cheap lens from like a while ago.

34:47Jawad MirYeah.

34:48Eli ArensonReally pricey now, so, you know, it's all fashion.

34:52Jawad MirAwesome. What's next for you, man?

34:54Eli ArensonWell, I just finished Saturday. That's why we had to postpone to this week our discussion. I just finished on Saturday a 60-day shoot for a smaller kind of indie production here in Europe about the first, female pre… president in the history of the world who happened to be Icelandic. Her name's Vigdís Finnbogadóttir. So it's like a kind of Cr… the Crown style costume drama in the '50s and '60s of Iceland and Stockholm and, Sweden and, Copenhagen and whatever, and it's the journey of this woman. So it's a really like polar opposite from The Watchers. It's just like a drama with a capital D with, you know, no monsters and no VFX and no nothing. You know what I mean? It's just characters talking. So that was really fun. So that was going basically since we wrapped The Watchers until this last Saturday. So now I'm gonna take a break for a while and see what happens next. But the next film that I actually shot previous to The Watchers but is coming out soon is, a film on Netflix called The Deliverance from Lee Daniels that I'm really excited about.

36:07Eli ArensonIt's gonna be…

36:07Jawad MirOkay

36:07Eli Arenson... Coming in September. So I shot…

36:10Jawad MirOkay

36:10Eli Arenson... That before The Watchers, but it went through a long process in post. So that's coming out soon, so I'm really excited for you and everybody to see that film.

36:18Jawad MirThat's awesome. Let me see. I'm just going on IMDb to look at it.

36:23Eli ArensonI think Netflix just announced it, like a couple days ago, their first kinda kickoff for it.

36:31Jawad MirIt, I like the premise. I like the premise.

36:34Eli ArensonIt's a really cool film. I'm really excited for people to see it. It's like a horror film also, but you know, like a lot of the horror films that I do, like Lamb and like The Watchers and, you know, they're not 100% horror. They're always like a little genre bending. So if The Watchers was like fantasy horror, this is like social horror, The Deliverance. It's like a lot about social issues, and it's, it's a really cool, really cool film. So we'll see.

36:59Jawad MirThat's awesome, man. Let's, let's chat about that, closer to the release date than

37:03Eli ArensonFor sure

37:04Jawad Mir... And, would love to have you on again. This was, this was really cool. Thank you so much, man, for all the detail. I mean, we can probably talk for another couple of hours about this, but, you know, it, maybe we'll save it for next time. But

37:16Jawad Mir... Great work.

37:17Eli ArensonThank you.

37:17Jawad MirReally like your, energy just talking and just being authentic, and it's, it's really cool. So thank you so much for your work.

37:26Eli ArensonCool. Yeah. Thank you so much. All right.

37:28Jawad MirAll right.

37:28Eli ArensonSee you soon. Bye.