Dan Laustsen on Shooting Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’: ‘It’s About Love and Forgiveness’

TURIN, Italy  — When cinematographer Dan Laustsen described his collaboration with Guillermo del Toro, he reached first for feelings rather than lenses. “It’s like trust and love,” he told the audience at the View Conference in Turin via video interview with journalist Carolyn Giardina. “We have the same taste and the same way we want to tell stories.” 

That shorthand, developed across “Crimson Peak, “The Shape of Water” and “Nightmare Alley” underpins their latest partnership on “Frankenstein,” one of Del Toro’s most personal projects yet for Netflix.

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From the outset, both filmmaker and cinematographer shared a visual ambition to make a film that feels classical but looks modern. 

“The movement of the camera, the light – everything should feel alive and contemporary, even in this period setting,” Laustsen said. 

To achieve that balance, they turned to the Arri Alexa 65 camera paired with Leitz Thalia lenses, cropping 5% of the frame to give the visual-effects team freedom to stabilize and re-frame in post as required. The large-format setup, Laustsen explained, produced a big, classic feeling, like old 70mm, but with a modern sharpness.

Working on such a large sensor altered nearly every visual instinct. A 24 mm lens, normally a wide-angle in Super 35, reads as a mid-wide on the Alexa 65, changing both perspective and proximity. “Because the sensor is so big, the focal length behaves differently,” he said. “You can go from a wide shot to a close-up in one move without distortion, but you can’t hide anything.” 

That intimacy demanded discipline in lighting, focus, and texture, the lens ability to capture such detail posed its own challenge. “They’re incredibly sharp—almost too sharp. Skin tones become very crisp,” Laustsen noted. To soften that hyper-real edge, he mounted a diffusion filter behind the lens, where it interacted with light already focused by the glass. “If you put diffusion in front, you just get a filter flare; behind the lens you get a lens flare. These lenses hardly flare at all, so it gives this beautiful softness in the highlights while keeping contrast clean.”

Light, for Laustsen, drives emotion as much as it defines space. He favors single sources—window, fireplace, lantern—while keeping practical fixtures mostly out of frame. 

On stage, 20-to 24-kilowatt tungsten lamps shaped the atmosphere; on location, HMIs pushed daylight through layers of smoke and haze. “We used shafts and depth, but never visible lamps. It keeps the world believable,” he said. Mixing color temperatures, firelight against the “steel” blue of a window – added what he calls “emotional contrast.” He admired “Barry Lyndon” during prep and tested the look, but found Kubrick’s even candle dominated color temperature not the right fit for the turbulence of “Frankenstein.”

Nowhere was that balance harder than in the creature’s creation sequence, an orchestration of lightning, steam and moonlight. “I was a little afraid of that scene,” Laustsen admitted. “It could easily become chaos. The trick was not to drift too far from the look of the rest of the movie.”

Color palette and continuity anchored every department. Laustsen said every element from hair, makeup, wardrobe, and even wall paint  was tested under the same lighting setup to ensure consistency. “That’s the power of light,” he said.

Laustsen fought to keep that realism even in large set piece moments. On the ship set, he insisted on real torches over digital flames. “When the wind changes, the light changes. And I think that’s so fantastic, because that makes everything organic.” For the castle’s burning, a full-scale Toronto set merged with miniature photography shot in London on a RED camera at 96 frames per second. They didn’t want to use CG fire. Del Toro wanted to shoot it for real. It looks photoreal because it is.

Underwater scenes used a “dry-for-wet” illusion: the stage filled with smoke and moving light projections to mimic the play of currents while actors stayed dry and free to perform and free of fear of drowning.

Yet Laustsen’s favourite moment is quiet – a dawn conversation between stars Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, lit by sunrise bouncing off a cracked mirror. “It’s very simple,” he said. “A lot of anger and love at the same time. The performance is fantastic… and it’s just when everything comes together.”

Asked what he hopes audiences carry away, Laustsen paused. “I think it’s about love and forgiveness,” he said, “and that is very important now.”