“Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos and DP Robbie Ryan struck an unusual “balance between artifice and realism” with a surreal Victorian tale – The Process.

For Oscar-nominated filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan: Poor stuff was the most ambitious film to date – terrifying in terms of the volume of the sets and the lighting.

Based on Alistair Gray’s novel and written by Lanthimos’ frequent collaborator Tony McNamara, the film weaves its way through a colorfully surreal account of the Victorian era, from London to Lisbon to Paris, with epic locations for each city set in the Budapest Studio Space is built. .

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“I found it quite overwhelming how it was all going to be achieved,” says Ryan Poor stuff in today’s episode of The process. “I just went with it and was maybe a little bit in denial at the time that it was going to be exactly the way it was.”

Poor stuff tells the story of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman who is recruited by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) as she sees her unborn child’s brain transplanted into her own skull after she commits suicide. Under Baxter’s tutelage, the now childlike Bella seems eager to learn. But as she grows increasingly hungry for the worldliness she misses – especially sex – she embarks on a whirlwind cross-continental adventure with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer.

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Ryan came to the project after receiving an Oscar nomination for it The favorite, the dark historical comedy that marked his first collaboration with Lanthimos, and in some ways the project built on the ideas and motifs toyed with in that project, including his interest in wide-angle lenses. The pair experimented with a wide range before narrowing their list down to four or five, which helped reinforce the film’s heightened imagery. The most notable of these was a 4mm lens for 16mm cameras which, when installed on a 35mm camera, created an unusual vignetting frame.

Next to the lens the duo looked at for the first time while preparing The favoriteThe visual elements played with this time included various zooms, which were a new addition to their shared language, as well as the rare widescreen format called VistaVision, which was reflected in a re-animation sequence. The films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, especially those of Michael Ballhaus, served as inspiration for the high-zoom sequences.

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While scenes aboard a ship at sea, shot against an LED wall, presented a unique lighting challenge, the set for the city of Lisbon was the most challenging set to work with, which Ryan says was matched by co -production designer James Price. , to a “theme park.” The biggest challenge for the DP was to reproduce the light of the sun for the labyrinth city. For Lanthimos, it came down to the people. “It was the set that was needed [the] “Most of the extras were difficult to organize and make believable,” he says, “believable but also implausible, the way the film strikes that balance between artifice and realism.”

Lanthimos adds that ironically, while the Lisbon set was “huge,” it wasn’t that big considering its intended use. “So it was also a bit difficult to figure out how to film it,” he says, “and make it look like it was actually a place where . . .” [Bella] would be lost in it.”

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World Premiere in Venice, where it received over 10 minutes of standing ovation and won the Golden Lion, Poor stuff was nominated for seven Golden Globes on Sunday, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and is one of the leading Oscar contenders this year. For more on Ryan and Lanthimos’ discussion of their general process of building a visual language, as well as the specifics of this “pretty crazy” film and the conscious decision to go in a different direction with their next film, see Kinds of kindness (fka AND) – also for Searchlight – click above.