“Skincare,” the sly thriller starring Elizabeth Banks now in theaters, begins with an eerily annoying make-up routine carried out by Banks’ movie star aesthetician character, Hope. From there, the film acquires what cinematographer Christopher Ripley known as an “unhinged momentum.”
That translated to the precise filming, as nicely, which took all of 18 days in Hollywood. Not unhealthy for a movie that’s set in 2013, which required a stunning quantity of retro gear to drag off.
“[Director Austin Peters] and I both were very interested in that time period, a period in flux with a lot of changed energy,” Ripley advised IndieWire. “Hollywood was, as Austin described it, ‘fully torqued.’ Uncanny and very disturbing, intense energy going on.”
That vitality was the right backdrop for the more and more unraveling Hope, whose shot at monetary safety and fame together with her personal product line is upended when a rival aesthetician strikes in throughout from her salon, and a wave of harassment begins.
What Ripley described because the “insidious undertones” of the cinematography solely enhanced the capturing location: Crossroads of the World in Hollywood, an open-air mall that after served as dwelling to filmmakers’ places of work (together with Alfred Hitchcock) however one which additionally has an insidious previous of its personal. Particularly, Ella Crawford had the mall in-built 1936 on the positioning of her husband’s deadly capturing, a person who additionally served as inspiration for a few of Raymond Chandler’s criminals (proving his Los Angeles bona fides).
That meta layer provides to the unease, however Crossroads of the World served a extra sensible function. “Skincare” wanted a capturing location with two places of work going through each other in order that Hope would always be confronted by her new, rising rival, Angel. “We didn’t want it to be filmed on a soundstage and cut to location, and you’re stitching it together,” Ripley mentioned. “You feel the other space oppressively looming. We even kinda had it that the pink neon glow [of Angel’s sign] is leaking into the window of her space and reflecting on her eyes. Just this idea that this oppressive energy is coming from the other space.”
The lighting steadily ratchets up that oppressive feeling, together with the reconstruction of these orange-tinged streetlights which were phased out in favor of white LEDs. Ripley and his staff painstakingly recreated them, accurately clocking that solely sodium-vapor gasoline discharge lights may actually seize the look of the period’s nights.
“We’d place these practical fixtures in L.A. and rig them onto buildings,” Ripley mentioned, “so the fixtures could be visible in the frame and be period accurate. A sheen of something weird on top of this glamorous Hollywood world. You can emulate that look, but the actual fixtures [and light] deadens the [skin] in a certain way and does these horrible, oppressive things.”
Equally oppressive (however for the filmmakers) was a key motel room location the place the viewers learns extra about who’s behind Hope’s torments. Accessible for only a day, Ripley and his gaffer, Mathias Peralta, used their very own bulbs within the room’s fixtures to permit Peters 360-degree filming. The scene consists of some aggressive, Travis Bickle-esque choreography, which digital camera operator George Bianchini bought very into.
“He gets into the character, so he was almost acting with the camera and it was this insanely heightened sleazy moment, with me and Austin sitting on a toilet seat in the bathroom looking at a tiny monitor,” Ripley mentioned. “It was the only place we could be. So there we were, going crazy on Day 4, saying, ‘I think we have something here.’”
