00:00So this is Thomas thinking, this is fine.
00:09Magic.
00:10Hey Vanity Fair, I'm Robert Eggers. I'm the writer and director of Nosferatu.
00:15And I'm Nicholas Holt and I play Thomas Hutter.
00:17And this is Notes on a Scene.
00:23The scene is Nicholas Holt's character Thomas Hutter arriving at Castle Orlok in
00:29Transylvania. I'll do sound effects.
00:31So you can't see much of it, but this is Hunedoara Castle in Transylvania.
00:37Amazing medieval castle that looks just what you'd want a gothic castle to look like.
00:41And it is my belief that it is Bram Stoker's inspiration for Castle Dracula in the novel.
00:46We put here Count Orlok's coat of arms, which has these wolf dragons.
00:53It's a wolf's head with a serpent's body.
00:56The ancestors of the ethnic Romanians were called Dacians.
01:00And this was like one of their big symbols.
01:03And they had like war trumpets and flags shaped like these guys.
01:07So here on either side of the coat of arms are these Dacian Dracos.
01:11I love hanging out with Rob because you learn things like this.
01:14And it's all the little details like this that make this movie so special.
01:17This is an interesting moment here because here are my legs.
01:21But they're not actually my legs.
01:23No.
01:23Cinema.
01:25Cinema magic.
01:25We're getting into dream logic.
01:27And the shots kind of flow into one another.
01:29And because Thomas Hutter's character is in this kind of weird like dream state here.
01:34And he's getting kind of dizzy.
01:35And he's inside this carriage that is very like suffocating with a coffin like atmosphere.
01:41And so here we think he's in the carriage, right?
01:43We're seeing his lap.
01:45But let's see what happens now.
01:50Oh, I'm in a carriage.
01:52Where am I?
01:53Wait, no, I'm not.
01:55What's this over here?
01:57We reveal that I'm actually walking up to outside of Count Orlok's castle.
02:01So that was actually a very complex scene.
02:02I mean, you can describe it.
02:04So Nick is standing actually with a coat draped over him.
02:08And then there's the carriage behind him.
02:10And as the camera's right here, the carriage comes apart.
02:14And his legs are pulled out so that then the castle doors are behind him.
02:18Now we're in a castle in the Czech Republic called Pernstein Castle.
02:23That's in Moravia.
02:24And we built all the interiors of the castle.
02:27But we needed the gatehouse and the courtyard as locations.
02:30And this castle, I went and it was really fantastic.
02:34But I found out that Werner Herzog shot his Nosferatu there.
02:38So I refused to shoot at the castle because I didn't want to use Herzog's castle again.
02:42So then we scouted like tons more castles.
02:45And they all sucked.
02:46And the location manager was like, look, dude, like Pernstein Castle is the castle that looks
02:51like right for the movie.
02:53You just have to suck it up.
02:54So then we went to the castle again.
02:56And on the way back, I was scrubbing through Werner Herzog's Nosferatu and realized that
03:02the places that we wanted to use weren't in the Herzog film.
03:05So we were able to use the castle, tip our hat to Herzog, but not shoot it the same way.
03:10And in fact, these gates here are gates that Craig Lathrop and the rest of the production
03:17design team brought in because I wanted even like bigger, more impressive gates that were
03:22actually at the castle.
03:23So we built like these gates in front of the gates to make it bigger.
03:28Bigger is better when it comes to castle gates.
03:30I would like to imagine you going to castles and be like, this place sucks.
03:33And what was wrong with the castle?
03:35They weren't atmospheric enough.
03:37There was one that was cool, but you had to climb a mile long staircase to get up there.
03:42That's not ideal for filming.
03:45The snow is made from potato flakes, like freeze dried mashed potatoes and coat of arms
03:52once again.
03:53The snow, I'm sure I heard a story at some point about you watching snow in different
03:57movies and finding like the last few bags of snow in the 90s or something.
04:01OK, so basically there is a thing called a snow candle that is like a bucket that you
04:06light on fire and swing around.
04:08And then like snow goes all over the place.
04:10Almost like ash.
04:11Yeah.
04:11And that's like Ridley Scott movies.
04:13Like that's the snow that he uses.
04:15And I used it on The Northman.
04:16But in between The Northman and Nosferatu, that snow became illegal because the gas that
04:21makes the snow flow is toxic.
04:23Fun fact.
04:24Production thought, OK, well, we're going to have to have to use CG snow.
04:27And I refused to use CG snow.
04:29And so, yeah, so then I was angrily watching a movie from the 1940s called The Queen of
04:35Spades with some bourbon.
04:37And there's like beautiful, beautiful snow.
04:39And I'm taking pictures on my phone and sending it to the snow effects guys being like, come
04:44on, put these in the 40s.
04:46And yeah, it was these potato flakes things.
04:48And basically they stopped doing it in the 90s.
04:50So, yes, we bought all of the potato flakes snow in Europe to make this movie.
04:55So no one will ever have better snow ever again.
04:59Ever again.
04:59Ever again.
05:00There's something else interesting here.
05:02Jaron, the DP, his lighting of this moonlight lighting, he used a concave or convex mirror
05:08in the sky that he bounced the light off of to create it.
05:10This was something you developed on The Northman too, right?
05:12Yeah, yeah.
05:13To basically get like a light ray that is closer to the large size that would come from
05:18like the moon.
05:19Was it a concave or convex?
05:22Convex.
05:22Convex.
05:23I could draw that.
05:26But you get the idea.
05:27This was an intimidating scene to know that I was going to have to shoot.
05:31People have said like, what's, is it hard to do something that's been done a lot of
05:34times?
05:35And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
05:36Because there's so many Draculas and Nosferatu's, like sometimes there's a lot of things that
05:41never ever work, you know, in the story.
05:43So you're like, oh, here's my opportunity to explore that.
05:46But this scene of Hutter or Harker going to Dracula's castle, like has been done well
05:52many times.
05:52So this was quite intimidating.
05:55And a big part of making it work was the music.
05:57So obviously there's this big crescendo as the doors open.
06:03Kind of aleatoric 20th century classical music horror sound, but also has some kind of nods
06:08to James Bernard Hammer horror.
06:11But things get a little bit more abstract and a little bit more quiet and dreamlike
06:15as the doors open.
06:18That's Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok, obviously.
06:21They're shown in silhouette and at a distance.
06:24Remember, you're talking about this bow, but it's not actually a realistic kind of bow
06:28as I normally would.
06:29It's more like he's compelling me to do it subconsciously.
06:32I think, you know, something that as much as I'm a massive, massive fan of Murnau films,
06:38something that is slightly ludicrous about it is that, you know, Max Schreck's vampire
06:44looks like a freak.
06:45And Hutter comes to his house and very nice to meet you and has a meal and it's fine and
06:50doesn't run away screaming.
06:52And in our version, Bill Skarsgård is very much a vampire of folklore from a time when
06:59people actually believed in vampires and thought that they were real.
07:03And these early folk vampires look like putrid walking corpses.
07:08And if you were a putrid corpse, you wouldn't want your house guests to know that you were
07:15that.
07:16I try not to let them know.
07:18So Warlock's always kept at a distance to kind of conceal his identity.
07:24And there is also a build up to, you know, finally revealing him.
07:28Yeah, I remember talking about that when we get inside the castle as well.
07:30Him always being in the shadows and for Thomas not fully being able to understand what he's
07:34gone into and still having some sort of doubt.
07:37Yeah.
07:37That he would stay.
07:39That he would stay for dinner and not turn around straight away and start screaming.
07:42So this is Thomas thinking, this is fine.
07:48Magic.
07:52If you notice, as Warlock walks away, we don't hear his footsteps at all.
07:59A little bit of a nod to the silent film.
08:01But then, of course, the sound design comes back more naturalistically with the scraping
08:04sound of the door.
08:08Also, this shot from behind was not storyboarded.
08:11Jared and I infamously like storyboard everything to death and then do what has been
08:17storyboarded by Adam Pescott, the storyboard artist.
08:20But this shot of the doors closing, Chris Columbus, the creative producer who is known
08:25for directing Harry Potter and Home Alone and writing the Gremlins, ran up to me and was
08:30like, check out this shot from behind.
08:32And I was like, that's a really good idea.
08:34And thank God we did, because we really need it.
08:37Because of the feeling of watching Thomas kind of enter and get trapped.
08:41I mean, yeah, you know, it's game over, clearly.
08:43Bidum-dum-dum.
08:43Oh, spooky sound there, too.
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