Anna Daniels
Last week, Shazam director David F. Sandberg went back to his roots and released a new horror short, Shadowed. When I wrote up the story, I mentioned that not only am I a fan of Sandberg’s short horror films, I’m also a fan of when he uploads behind-the-scenes making-of videos. And sure enough, Sandberg has done just that, releasing a new Shadowed making-of video that you can watch below.
The Making Of Shadowed
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NtkcsZY8g?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
This making-of video is actually longer than the short film, and that’s fine. Sandberg goes very in-depth as to how the movie came about – I’ll confess there’s a lot of technical jargon here I don’t understand. But it’s still fascinating to watch how this all came together. It looks deceptively simple, but of course, it’s not. Sandberg explains that originally, he was hoping to change things up with his next horror short – possibly go bigger, even bring in more actors.
And then the coronavirus happened, and trapped Sandberg and his wife, and frequent leading lady Lotta Losten, inside. The result: go simple again, following in the footsteps of Lights Out and Sandberg’s other short films.
What I like most about this making-of video is all the talk about how to shoot in darkness/nighttime. “Good night lighting has some dynamic range,” Sandberg says. “You have a lot of areas that go to black, and you have some highlights to give you contrast.” Then there are the somewhat ingenious solutions Sandberg came up with here – like wearing a white shirt when he was doing handheld shots to bounce some light. Sandberg also isn’t above pointing out some mistakes he made here, like when some light creeps into a shot that really shouldn’t be there.
Sandberg also talks about how he always ends up reaching a moment when shooting a film – short or feature-length – that he begins to seriously doubt himself, and I think that’s something we can all relate to. I know I can, at least.
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