Chris Miller
Who would want to voluntarily get cursed by evil forces? That’s the question the new RobinsCage documentary titled A Cursed Man asks. The official description of the film is as follows: “Documentary filmmaker Liam Le Guillou enters the world of witchcraft and the occult, searching for an answer to the question “is magic real?” Seeking out some of the world’s most powerful dark magic practitioners, Le Guillou asks them to put a curse on him. The consequences of this dangerous request force him to question the nature of reality and belief in this never-before-seen, dark social experiment.” Liam’s cursed journey takes him from LA to Mexico, New Orleans and India in the quest to learn more about magic. The man behind the lens capturing the darkness and what ensues was cinematographer Blake Horn, whose recent work can also be seen in Welcome Villain’s yoga horror tale Mind Body Spirit (2024).
A small crew might not always work to the advantage of every production, but for A Cursed Man Blake thinks that was one of their strongest assets, along with a condensed equipment package. He says, “With non-scripted the biggest, expensive cameras might actually be a hindrance and might slow down your process. You might not get the shots that you want. Sometimes spending more time on a single shot rather than getting multiple smaller shots is the way to tell a story.” To coincide with the VOD release of the film, we asked Blake to pull back the curtain on the production process of A Cursed Man.
Film Obsessive: First off, Can you talk about how you became a cinematographer?
Blake Horn: Sure, I grew up loving movies and was infatuated with them. Old ’80s action movies, ’90s action movies. My favorite movie as a kid was Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The cool part about pre-streaming movies was special edition DVDs that you got two discs. One was the movie, the other was behind-the-scenes looks. You would have these amazing behind-the-scenes documentary units showing how each filmmaker did a specific gag or achieved their visual style for a movie. I was always totally infatuated with these reveals. I saw Alien’s second disc and saw how they did all the miniatures and couldn’t believe it at that young age. Since I definitely wanted to pursue film as a career, I went to film school in upstate New York at Ithaca College and really enjoyed my time there. Immediately upon graduating, I moved to Brooklyn, New York and began working my way up from doing 1st ACing and gaffing to shooting my own independent projects and shooting passion projects on the side. Slowly, they would all merge into being able to DP and shoot different films, commercials, and documentaries.
A Cursed Man starts out quiet and serene and quickly changes into a much darker topic. How did your camera work change with these emotions?
The beginning is mainly shot on sticks and a little handheld with Liam researching in his studio. Then as the story took an adventurous turn, taking us to different cities around the world, we ended up shooting so much more handheld. You could say that that’s because it gets tiring holding and carrying a tripod all day, but aesthetically and motivation wise, we really wanted the film to have a sense of verité. We wanted to be flexible and travel with our characters. So handheld was really the approach. As our settings changed, inherently the look of the film changed dramatically. I think that provides a big source of how the film and story evolves.
A Cursed Man revolves around the world of witchcraft and the occult. What was the craziest thing you saw while making the film?
There are quite a few things. It’s funny, you could look at it as being crazy like wow, so otherworldly, but a lot of times I think the things that stood out to me were actually the cleansing practices. After Liam got cursed, my B cam operator and I asked Elias to cleanse us, which meant spraying us with different liquids and giving us different rocks and giving us a whole cleansing. I thought that was just such a unique and interesting moment to witness a practice that I’ve never seen before. We actually saw very similar rituals in Mexico, India, and New Orleans with Prince Ty. I think seeing that common thread of these cleansing practices and almost these blessings, for lack of a better word, I thought wasn’t crazy, but it was just very eye-opening to see as well as to experience.
Can you talk about the lighting during the sit-down interviews? Sometimes the subjects are lit with heavy shadows and sometimes they’re much brighter. Why did you light some one way and others differently?
We wanted all of our interviews to be rich and have deeper shadows but you really have to embrace locations when lighting an interview, rather than fighting. We had such a small lighting kit with us that we could only do so much. We always asked ourselves, do we want this to feel spooky, or do we want to have this feel more airy, with a spiritual quality? Our main key light throughout the whole film was this small 18 by 24 inch LED panel called Falcon Eyes. It is so versatile and really small, really easy to travel with, and it turned out to be an invaluable tool for us when lighting. We were also always tweaking with the shades and the materials that were already present to control light. Each time working to bring the audience’s eye to our characters and trying to make them look beautifully authentic.
You’ve worked on both documentaries and scripted films. Aside from the obvious, how is your work different on each of these approach techniques, meaning approach and techniques?
I actually like bringing similar approaches to both my documentary work and my narrative work. I always consider the known limitations and set realistic expectations at the start, no need to try to bite off more than you can chew. I love asking for any type of shoot: What is our strongest asset? Do we own a location? Do we have a free location that helps us with budget, but also allows us to really tune our script to the location rather than our location to our script? What tools do we have at our disposal to maximize the look of this project? Especially with scripted work I like to consider that sometimes the biggest, most expensive camera might actually be a hindrance and might slow down your process. Sometimes spending more time on a single shot rather than getting multiple smaller shots is the way to tell a story. Whenever I approach a story scripted or documentary, I strongly consider how is this story asking to be told? What’s the most important part of this story, for this specific scene, for this specific shot?
What was the most complex scene in A Cursed Man to shoot?
I think in India when we scaled the mountain and shot the Ganesh scene up at the top of the mountain in India. It required us to hike up a mile and a half, it felt vertical as we walked on loose terrain with our camera gear. We started very early in the morning and we ended very late at night. There was some worry about going up to this mountain because we didn’t know who we were going up with and we would be isolated with this stranger. When we got up there, a small wildfire was burning around us! Funnily enough, this beautifully gave us the visual we needed to match to psychological state and tone of the moment.
How do you see the balance between the artistic side of what you do, meaning finding the right way to tell the story and the technological side of it, (keeping track of all the latest cameras, gadgets, and software)? Is one more important than the other to you?
The creative and technical are totally intertwined when it comes to shooting a film, but I always like the creative to lead. I ask myself what gear and what tools am I going to want to use for this project? But at the end of the day, the best camera is the one that you have. I love when you hit a technical limitation, and you are able to use your creativity to overcome it. I think when you know what story you’re trying to tell and what you want it to look like then this will dictate what type of gear that you want to use and guide you through the journey.
There are a couple shots in the John Kruth segment that are reminiscent of Flatliners and the famous tv screen shot in Poltergeist. Did you have those films in mind with this segment?
I think we did talk about Poltergeist at one point, but Liam and I are such big horror buffs that I’m honestly honored to hear that those two came to mind. I think we talked about Jacob’s Ladder and Altered States with William Hurt.
I love the look of that scene and a lot of that is lit with just one 2 foot LED tube just placed in the right spot. We were using these Nanlite battery powered RGB tubes that were really flexible in the respect of them being small, light, packing a punch. They also have a nice soft inherent quality to them. I think it gives that Flatliners and Poltergeist feel because you are surrounded by computer equipment and graphs, giving a sense of production design. Just killing house lights and then adding a light can change your entire look. When you start from scratch with your own film lights, you create an image that has more shadows, is more cinematic, and in this case creates the mystery we were going for.
Can you talk about the colorful lighting for the John Kruth segment? Was that your idea? Why did you want that segment to stand out so much more?
That was definitely a collaboration between Liam and I. In that scene Liam was supposed to be in total darkness since the scientists were measuring the level of photons that his brain was producing while meditating. But since we needed to document this moment in some way for our audience and we needed some type of light for our sensors to capture something, Liam and I had to ask each other, “What light do we want to use that would represent being in complete utter darkness?” We thought of something that was very unnatural, to us that was purple. It was a fun little moment of just being able to play with color that we would never use otherwise.
