The Big Picture

Academy Award nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan discusses his experience reuniting with Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos to make Poor Things. While talking to Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Ryan revisited a number of key scenes in the film, including Stone and Mark Ruffalo’s unforgettable dance. Ryan also revealed which especially striking visual was a happy accident due to a camera malfunction.

Academy Awards nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan is thriving. Not only is he busy celebrating another potential Oscar juggernaut with Poor Things, but he also quietly photographed one of the most exceptional big screen feats I’ve ever seen – A24’s Medusa Deluxe, a hugely ambitious feature directorial debut by Thomas Hardiman that’s designed to look like the story unfolds in a single continuous shot. That visual marvel is currently available to buy or rent digitally while Poor Things is getting ready to dazzle moviegoers on the big screen.

The movie stars Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, a woman who’s brought back to life by Willem Dafoe’s Dr. Godwin Baxter. While Bella may appear to be an adult woman, she’s actually been given the brain of a child with the movie chronicling her coming-of-age story as she explores the world with boundless wonder.

With Poor Things hitting theaters on December 8th, I got the chance to chat with Ryan about his second collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, a project that posed a number of significant challenges but also a wealth of wildly unique creative opportunities. Check out the video at the top of this article or the interview transcript below to hear all about the ambitious builds required to bring the world of Poor Things to life, that unforgettable Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo dance scene, which particular visual was actually caused by a camera error, and loads more! He also offers a brief tease of what to expect from his third movie with Lanthimos, which has already been filmed.

Poor Things The incredible tale about the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. Release Date December 8, 2023 Rating R Main Genre Horror

PERRI NEMIROFF: I am slightly obsessed with Medusa Deluxe. I have to ask you one question about that. I want to know the single most challenging sequence to photograph in that movie.

ROBBIE RYAN: I guess because it sort of pretends to be one shot, because we shot over nine days it wasn’t one shot, obviously, but we endeavored to try and do the longest takes we could. So I think the first take, the very beginning of the film goes on for about a half an hour, so that was probably the biggest challenge, and it was the most fun. I don’t like a lot of things about one-shot films, I can tell you now, but what I do like about it is the theatrical aspect of it where everybody has to be on point, not only the camera or the sound, everybody, mainly the actors need to get it right. It’s kind of fun watching how actors adapt and don’t go, “I need another take” [laughs], because they know they have only got half an hour. If they mess up within that 25-minute part of that half an hour, they will feel pretty bad, as all of us would. So that was a challenge, but that was kind of the fun challenge.

The biggest challenge for me, in a way, was every other film I’ve ever done I was the operator on, but this film obviously is all steadicam and I don’t do steadicam. We obviously tried to get somebody who was suitable who had a good technique but also was able to be strong because it’s a long process, and who was maybe a little bit – because we were low budget – somebody who was maybe doing it for the first time. So we got this really great guy called Jake Whitehouse and he was a lovely steadicam guy. But the challenge was for me to prove to him that he could do these shots because I’d be rehearsing it with a camera and I’d go, “Okay, we’ll do this, we’ll do that,” with Tom [Hardiman], the director, and then Jake would go, “I can’t do that.” I’m like, “Why can’t you do that?” He had this AR steadicam rig. I would know so much about camera movement but with that AR, it does it in a different way, so I was having to learn how he would be able to achieve something or why he was saying he wouldn’t be able to achieve it, and that was a process I wasn’t expecting.

That movie is something else. The only reason why I’m able to pull myself away from talking about that is because Poor Things is also something special. I’m just hoping that all the conversation that is likely to be had about your work in Poor Things also inspires people to seek out some of your past films, in particular Medusa Deluxe, which needed a larger audience than what it got. It deserved it.

RYAN: It did deserve it. It just fell through the cracks a little bit, unfortunately. But it’s a fun one. And he’s a very interesting director, Tom.

Alright, Poor Things now. You’ve worked with some pretty incredible directors over the years. Do you find that the directing greats have a shared quality you appreciate, but then also, what is something about Yorgos that makes him one of a kind?

RYAN: First of all, I’m blessed to have been able to work with people I’ve worked with. I’ve been so lucky. I pinch myself most of the time to go, “How the hell did this all work out?” But, I guess the fact of the matter is all those people I have worked with have all been really gracious as far as how to let me work within their world and kind of let me into the world of their shooting. Some directors, like Ken Loach, would have had a style very much from the get-go and I sort of figured out what that was, and he let me do that within a very patient way. But, you know, all of this stems back from my work with Andrea Arnold because I think I wouldn’t be anywhere without her. We’re peas in a pod, in a way. We kind of have a lot of connection and the things we like most about cinema are similar. So she totally brought me on. After her short film Wasp, we kind of started really enjoying figuring out how to do the next ones, and we just have a really great shorthand now. Those are directors who, I guess, gave me freedom.

And then working with Yorgos, Yorgos definitely has similar ways of letting me be free, but at the same time, I’m trying my best to figure out what it is that is the world of Yorgos. He’s really unique. There’s nobody quite like him as a filmmaker, I think, because of his aspect on how he sees the cinema he wants to make. He’s got a great sensibility and I always feel kind of like, “Wow.” There’s not a film Yorgos hasn’t seen, there’s not an actor he wouldn’t know, and he’s really got a definitive idea of what he’s doing, but at the same time would happily not know what he’s walking into a room to do and then figure it out. So, there’s always a contradiction. There’s a lot of contradictions in his cinema and in his approach. I don’t want to say contradictions, but he’s an enigmatic director, and it’s a real joy to work with him because he really likes to have an environment to be creative.

Image via Searchlight Pictures

Going back to the very, very beginning when he first pitched this film to you, what would you say is the biggest difference between how you pictured it looking on day one compared to the finished film?

RYAN: The first time Yorgos mentioned this film to me was when we were at the screening for The Favourite in Venice and I said, “What’s happening next? What’s on the card?” And he goes, “Well, I’m thinking about making a film about a woman who wakes up with her baby’s brain in her head.” I was like, “That sounds about right. That sounds right up your street. Yeah, good. I would love to be involved with that if that happens.” So then he sent me the script, and I remember reading it really with a lot of enjoyment and trying to figure out, “What the hell?” Because every scene just seemed to be fairly full-tilt, full-volume, and crazy. I was like, “Wow, how is all of this gonna to fit into one film?” And from that to when we started filming to the final film, I think it kind of punched above its weight and got close to what the script wanted it to be. There’s not many scenes that aren’t in the film that are in the script, I think. Very few. [Laughs]

Literally every single ounce of this movie, the visual style in particular but also many other aspects, takes things to an 11. I can’t believe how full such a lengthy journey for this one character feels. It’s really quite the accomplishment for a mere two hours and 20 minutes.

RYAN: It is. It is absolutely that. And it’s down to the fact that Emma Stone is just so wonderful to watch. It’s been kind of crazy these last couple of months since the premiere in Venice that we’ve been, as a craft, sort of a team. We’ve been out promoting the film a lot, and obviously, with SAG on strike, the actors aren’t allowed to do that so we’ve almost kind of become the promoters. I always kind of go, “Yeah, blah, blah, blah,” but then you’re just gonna have to pay her back to how absolutely phenomenal Emma’s performance and all the actors supporting her are, and they make the film so real and it’s in a quite unreal way.

I am quite eager to get the actors in on this conversation, but I also enjoy the craftspeople getting this time in the spotlight because you all deserve it more than you get it.

RYAN: I think as far as this film goes, the craft side of it is really creative. There’s a lot of stuff to talk about craft-wise, and I’m totally happy to talk about it.

The Computer Programs That Helped Bring ‘Poor Things’ to Life
Image via Searchlight Pictures

I want to get into one particular part of the process which I hear was unique for you – the idea of getting to build this world from scratch. First, can you give us an example of something we see in the final film that you know would never have been possible had you not been involved in that element of this production so early on?

RYAN: I think all of it’s like that, really. Everything was a construct. And considering something like The Favourite was a completely location-based film, this is all of a sudden up to the production designers to create the world in front of us and the costume designer and make-up and hair, obviously. As a cinematographer, it’s always what’s in front of the camera so I’m kind of not doing anything much different to what I would do on other films. It’s just sort of the things that are going on in front of the camera in Poor Things are quite elevated and really, really interesting to film.

But as far as the process me and Yorgos go through, the cinematography is not a million miles away from Poor Things. It was just a joy to be involved with how we could incorporate our camera moves within the sets. James [Price] and Shona [Heath] would work from a computer program called Unreal Engine and Blender, and these are two very high-end 3D programs where you could see the whole set in its digital format and you could walk through it in a 3D way. You could really see every aspect of it and we could kind of adapt it before it got built. So, I do think Yorgos was very keen on this piece of software because you could kind of build it knowing that it was gonna be what you wanted and as close as what you wanted.

For instance, when we walked into the set that was the ship, it was exactly how we’d looked at it as a 3D program, and it was quite unreal to sort of walk into something that we’d been looking at for ages on a computer because we were filming in another set for a long time so they built the ship set while we were filming on Baxter’s house, Dr. Baxter’s surgery and stuff like that. That was all taking up a lot of our time, so from the time we’d been prepping the Unreal Engine, Blender stuff to when we walked on was kind of a bit of a gap so I never really saw the ship fully built until we’d finished the other set. It was like it was Christmas Day. You walk in and this is the thing you’ve been seeing on a computer screen for so long, but it was tactile and tangible.

Whether it’s using software like that or any other element of this process, is there something new and specific to Poor Things that you think is going to influence your work on other films going forward where you’re going to want to take that technique with you?

RYAN: Well, they’re all old techniques, ironically. We like all the old stuff like shooting on film, for one. It feels like an old sort of technique, but it’s hanging in there. It’s like vinyl records.

I think within that niche I would say me and Yorgos were really fond of the VistaVision format. We shot on that for some of it, and that’s a very old format which was made in the ‘50s. It was a kind of Alfred Hitchcock – a lot of his films were shot on this one particular camera, and it’s called a VistaVision camera. Because our aspect ratio is 1.66, VistaVision’s native aspect is 1.66 also, so that was kind of like, “Oh, this is something we should try out.” We would have done more of it, but it was, unfortunately, a very noisy camera so for sync sound it was difficult to do that. Yorgos is very keen on getting his sound on set so we only used it for stuff like the reanimation sequence. Going forward, I would absolutely love to do a film on this VistaVision, but it’s kind of going backwardsly forwards, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I definitely understand that and the challenges that come with it.

Image via Searchlight

I want to get into a couple of very specific scenes. Of all of the really ambitious scenes and set pieces you have in this movie, going into filming, which did you think would be the most challenging to photograph and then, ultimately, was that indeed the toughest of the bunch or did a different scene catch you by surprise?

RYAN: No, no, the toughest one for me, and I felt it coming and then when it happened it was that one, it was when Bella goes to Lisbon and her world is turned upside down in this kaleidoscopic space. The set that they built was huge, amazingly, and elaborate. Sort of two quadrants of Lisbon pulled out of Lisbon and recreated in a studio in Hungary. It was an epic stage, really, and obviously involved having to approach it with more lighting and try and create a sunny environment, but mix it up. The main reason I knew it was gonna be a challenge was because all of our filming was in one studio in Hungary, but the build of this other place where they shot Lisbon, where Lisbon was getting built, was in another studio, which was like a two-hour drive away, so we just didn’t get to see it enough. That’s my post-rationalizing of this [laughs], is that we didn’t get to see it enough before we got there and I wasn’t able to drop in on a regular basis enough. It just felt like it was always going to be an uphill struggle, and it turned out to be such. But, you know, it was still an amazing thing to film. It just was a little bit more difficult.

[Laughs] I love how you’re like, “I didn’t get to do this enough,” and what I see is stunning, one-of-a-kind, I don’t know how you pulled it off …

RYAN: I’m glad that’s the case. I think all of us had a bit of an uphill struggle with that particular world.

Whatever struggles you powered through was well worth it.

Image via Searchlight

One specific scene that I absolutely have to ask you about – please walk me through the planning of and the filming of the dance scene? And also, how did that compare to filming the dance scene in The Favourite?

RYAN: I think the dancing in The Favourite sort of prepped me enough to know what was coming with that. Yorgos works with this choreographer called Constanza [Macras] and she’s really fun, and she kind of brings a great spirit to her dance routines. Mark Ruffalo and Emma Stone trained, certainly for like a good week, I think. I don’t know how long they worked with Constanza on it. I don’t think they had that much time to work on it, but they just brought so much to it. Because we were in the thick of a lot of filming, that was sort of like, “Okay, we’re onto the dance sequence now. Let’s get on with that.” I know that they’d done a lot of rehearsing on it, but maybe still not enough rehearsing.

My main concern on that scene from a camera point of view was that I wasn’t gonna knock down any of the other dancers because we were kind of up there with them filming among other dancers. [Laughs] You know, the camera’s going around on this small stage in a way. I always was a little bit concerned that a big lump of metal was gonna hit somebody, but we didn’t, thank god! I find the choreography in that was really fun. Again, being in front of the camera, it looks like we knew what we were doing, but really the secret is in the way the dance was choreographed.

It is absolutely stunning. I am eagerly awaiting the day when this movie comes out and hopefully that dance becomes the next hot TikTok trend. I just need that in my life right now. [Laughs]

RYAN: [Laughs] Yeah, they did it great. They did it a lot of times as well. It wasn’t a one-off, I can tell you that much.

It is so perfect, and so speaks to their characters and what they’re going through in the moment too, which just makes a moment like that even more effective.

RYAN: And the ending of it is hilarious when she throws the glass at him. It’s got a lot of real good comedic moments and good dancing.

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s Favorite Frame in ‘Poor Things’

Alright, now I’m going to ask the most evil question I have on my list because I’m essentially gonna ask you to pick your favorite child. Do you have a single favorite frame of this movie?

RYAN: [Laughs] A lovely question to ask. I always talk about this one because I love it because I love a happy mistake in a film. In the reanimation sequence – and it’s in the trailer – there’s the bit where she kind of wakes up finally and the camera we had was above her, and it was that old VistaVision camera. It wasn’t a great camera because it was a bit of a Frankenstein camera in its own way and it was running out of power, or whatever happened, the batteries ran low on it so when it was filming her, it kind of slowed down. When you slow a film camera down, the effect you watch when you see the results is that it speeds up, ironically, because it’s going like [mimics the camera whir]. So, just at the time when she opens her eyes, it kind of slowed down, and she kind of opens her eyes in a weird sort of unreal way, and I kind of feel that’s perfect for her. So I’ve always been fond of that shot a lot.

That’s been a question I’ve been eager to ask! Is that pure performance or something else? Because something just seems so unusual about it.

RYAN: Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it? It looks like it’s shot backwards, but it’s not. It’s shot forwards, but the camera slowed down, which made her blink open sort of quicker.

Unexpected movie magic is the best kind of magic. I love it.

I’ve gotta let you go soon so I’m gonna ask about one future film because clearly I love when you collaborate with your Yorgos and I hear the two of you have already made another film together. I don’t know if you’re allowed to tell us anything about that one, but can you compare the visual style of that film to this and also The Favourite?

RYAN: I think it’s been said already so I’m not gonna get into trouble because I thought I got into trouble already about letting things out of the bag on that one. But I think Yorgos mentioned it at the Venice Film Festival, so I’m allowed to say it. We shot Favourite and Poor Things on spherical lenses, so it’s kind of like that sort of aspect ratio, but the next film is shot with a widescreen aspect, so it’s an anamorphic film. That’s different in a lot of ways right from the get-go. And yeah, it was a really enjoyable process. It’s a different film, for sure, to Poor Things. Not many films are like Poor Things. [Laughs]

Smaller, right? Smaller scale?

RYAN: I don’t know. It’s bigger in other ways, but it’s certainly not like we built every set. No, it’s on location, there’s not so many lights. If that means it’s smaller, yes, it was smaller.

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