DP James Kniest on The Haunting of Bly Manor

After an au pair’s tragic death, the owner of an English country Manor, Henry Wingrave, hires a young nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew. But all is not as it seems as centuries of dark secrets of love and loss are waiting to be unearthed.

Horror series The Haunting of Bly Manor is Netflix follow up to The Haunting of Hill House, once again show run by Mike Flanagan.

Set in 1980s England and based on the gothic romance novellas of Henry James, the show is filmed in Vancouver. Maxime Alexandre photographed the first five episodes with DP James Kniest shooting episodes six, seven, eight and nine.

“Embracing someone else’s design is never ideal since everyone approaches telling a story a little differently,” says Kniest. “I have a good working relationship with Mike and he trusted me enough to do my own thing.”

Kniest inherited the ARRI LF and Signature Primes from Alexandre and the visual language shaped by DP Michael Fimognari on Hill House.

“The main decision I made was to give the series a moodier, darker look in keeping with the narrative arc as we approach its climax,” Kniest says. “I adapted the rear netting (diffusion technique) to be tighter, so the look was less Hallmark-y and minimised blooming in the highlights. I lit more with backlight to lend more fall off on faces while helping to carve people’s figures out and my camera style tends to be less static. I like to be fluid and to move the camera unless there’s a reason not to.”

The main Manor set was built in two separate studios; one housing the downstairs, the other the upstairs. “In almost every scene our characters go up or downstairs so it was tricky to track the shots on different days. The upstairs set had a green floor so we could shoot from top down below. We used a Technocrane to reach from foot to bannister.”

They also filmed on a farm set over winter, occasionally having to shift 3 ft of snow which wouldn’t quite suit a mild British climate. “We brought in a steam truck and melted 5 acres of snow, which turned into a muddy bog. We used the Technocrane so as not to tread around in the mud.”

The exterior set of the Manor grounds and lake also presented an environmental challenge. “SAG rules mean we have to heat the lake to about 80 °F since we have child actors in the water for one scene. With zero-degree air temperature that gave us a steam issue. We were able to get some fans, clear the steam and start rolling the camera before the steam would envelope us again.

“It was useful too, since the natural steam added to the ambient tone of ground fog and the spooky ethereal lake scene. There was another farm a few hundred yards away with bright sodium light, but we had so much steam we could block that out. So much of the fun in filming is leaning into these challenges which can end up being helpful elements.”

Unusually, episode eight was shot in black and white and set in the 1600s. “This was a lot of fun and one of the things that attracted me to the project,” he says. “We created a black and white LUT and monitored BW on set but protected the material by baking in a colour version.”

He employed Cinefade, a programmable accessory that allows the gradual transition between a deep and a shallow depth of field in one shot at constant exposure. “It helped the subject matter to pop off the background. It’s the first time I’ve used it, but it was easy to programme and without much light loss.”

Having finished principal photography by 28 February, editorial was hampered by Covid. That particularly impacted Kniest since he was overseeing the colour grade of all episodes, performed remotely by Corinne Bogdanowicz at Light Iron LA.

“I was viewing on iPad Pro which is not calibrated for HDR. We used Moxion to view episodes and share notes via timecode. It was challenging because some things got lost in the notes. I’m used to sitting with a colourist and both of us being able to see right there when we bring the contrast up or window a face. This was very daunting and I’m nervous about how it translates to the TV versus someone watching on an iPad. It’s so hard to grade without you both looking at a 1000 nit monitor.

“Sometimes colourists and producers err on the bright side of a grade to protect themselves. I like to push it to be as dark as possible but with compression and people viewing on different devices it is a tricky balance to know what to grade for. One of the things about Bly Manor is the nuances in the performance. The idea is to be just light enough not to miss those important story beats.”

Next up for Kniest is Midnight Mass, another Flanagan project for Netflix shooting in Vancouver based around a group of terminally ill young people.

“Each episode is standalone, so I’m looking forward to a lot of variety and to being able to design and create the look from scratch.”