When cinematographer Lawrence Sher, ASC first read the script forMaggie Gyllenhaal’sThe Bride, he didn’t have a plan. In fact, he wasn’t sure if his ideas would work. “The best thing when I read any script, is that I don’t know how the hell we’re going to do it,” says Sher. “When I read something and I’m like, whoa, this is full of all kinds of big challenges and ideas and techniques and it feels a bit scary, that’s when I get really excited and I really want to do it even more because I don’t have all the answers.” Working with the director, exploring their ideas and evolving the film together is one of his favorite parts of the moviemaking process.
The Bridetook an “everything burger” approach to historical accuracy, prioritizing emotional truth over adherence to a specific time period. Gyllenhaal and Sher wanted to make a movie that felt like it lived in the 30s, the 80s, and today, in a David Lynch-ian subversion of the romance genre. They were influenced byWild At Heart,True Romance,Lost Highway,Bonnie and Clyde, andThe Third Man, as well as 1930’s musicals. Sher also watched several oldFrankensteinmovies to get ideas for the “reinvigoration” scenes inThe Bride. He settled on the idea of a Polaroid photo developing from white and coming into focus after The Bride’s initial shock of electricity.
The movie used a variety of lenses and techniques. It was shot for IMAX using anamorphic lenses for standard 2.39:1 footage, then Sher switched to spherical lenses for the expanded IMAX sequences. As Frank and The Bride (Jessie Buckley) go on the run, Sher chose longer lenses to create a sense of “observational intimacy,” letting the camera stay further away from the actors while still feeling emotionally close. In homage to 1930sFrank Capramovies, Sher used a deeper f-stop for more depth of field.
Initially, Sher wanted to keep to a strictly faithful, period color palette, but quickly dropped the idea when it came to lighting the dance floor. “When I started, I thought, let me adhere to some of the rules of the time in which this movie takes place, which is pretty limited. You’re dealing with effectively tungsten light, you have a very limited color palette of warmth from street lights and from other lights,” he says. “I was holding on to this desire to be true to the time. But when the dance scene happens, that is just full fantasy and then it’s like, let’s forget this idea of the 30s and let’s just go into the emotion of what we want the lighting to do.”
The makeup effects forThe Bridewere entirely practical, withChristian Baleundergoing five hours or more of prosthetic makeup every day. It required extensive testing in pre-production, looking realistic while enabling Bale’s eyes and persona to shine through. The effects were so seamless that Sher felt confident lighting him in high-contrast, front-facing setups.
One of the film’s most striking sequences involved “movie-within-a-movie” segments where the characters appear in vintage 1930s musicals. Rather than just recreating the look, the team used similar techniques that were used inForrest Gump. They took original footage from classics likeGold Diggers of 1933,Broadway MelodyandDames,then dropped Christian Bale and Jake Gyllenhaal into the original frames using blue screens and physical set pieces that matched the source material. To seamlessly blend the shots, Sher matched the degradation, grain, and depth of field of the original films.
Sher always tries to seek out projects that scare him, because he finds that’s what gives him the most creative inspiration and satisfaction. “What makes each movie fun is trying something that you don’t entirely know. You want to be on the edge of feeling like, Is this going to work? You want to feel like you’re doing something that feels new and a little bit scary,” he explains. “And this movie,The Bride, had all of it. It had an incredible director who had an incredible vision and is super talented. And then it obviously had actors like Jessie and Christian. So this movie had everything in spades that I was looking for in terms of like a project to sink my teeth into.”
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SHOW RUNDOWN:
01:38 Close Focus
09:43-50:05 Lawrence Sher interview
50:21 Short ends
57:08 Wrap up/Credits
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