Director Robert Eggers breaks down a scene from his 2024 version of 'Nosferatu' where Nicholas Hoult's character Thomas Hutter arrives at the Castle Orlok in Transylvania. Robert provides an explanation of his elaborate use of sounds, needing to scout various castles to find the right one, creating snow from potato flakes, and so much more.NOSFERATU is in theaters now. https://www.focusfeatures.com/nosferatu/Director: Funmi SunmonuDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Richard TrammellTalent: Robert Eggers; Nicholas HoultProducer: Emebeit BeyeneProduction Manager: Andressa PelachiProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Meredith Judkins; Mica Medoff (on set)Camera Operator: Lucas VilicichAudio Engineer: Gloria "Glo" HernandezProduction Assistant: Fernando Barajas; Lauren BoucherPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug Larsen
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00So this is Thomas thinking, this is fine.
00:09Magic.
00:10Hey Vanity Fair, I'm Robert Eggers. I'm the writer and director of Nosferatu.
00:15And I'm Nicholas Holt and I play Thomas Hutter.
00:17And this is Notes on a Scene.
00:23The scene is Nicholas Holt's character Thomas Hutter arriving at Castle Orlok in
00:29Transylvania. I'll do sound effects.
00:31So you can't see much of it, but this is Hunedoara Castle in Transylvania.
00:37Amazing medieval castle that looks just what you'd want a gothic castle to look like.
00:41And it is my belief that it is Bram Stoker's inspiration for Castle Dracula in the novel.
00:46We put here Count Orlok's coat of arms, which has these wolf dragons.
00:53It's a wolf's head with a serpent's body.
00:56The ancestors of the ethnic Romanians were called Dacians.
01:00And this was like one of their big symbols.
01:03And they had like war trumpets and flags shaped like these guys.
01:07So here on either side of the coat of arms are these Dacian Dracos.
01:11I love hanging out with Rob because you learn things like this.
01:14And it's all the little details like this that make this movie so special.
01:17This is an interesting moment here because here are my legs.
01:21But they're not actually my legs.
01:23No.
01:23Cinema.
01:25Cinema magic.
01:25We're getting into dream logic.
01:27And the shots kind of flow into one another.
01:29And because Thomas Hutter's character is in this kind of weird like dream state here.
01:34And he's getting kind of dizzy.
01:35And he's inside this carriage that is very like suffocating with a coffin like atmosphere.
01:41And so here we think he's in the carriage, right?
01:43We're seeing his lap.
01:45But let's see what happens now.
01:50Oh, I'm in a carriage.
01:52Where am I?
01:53Wait, no, I'm not.
01:55What's this over here?
01:57We reveal that I'm actually walking up to outside of Count Orlok's castle.
02:01So that was actually a very complex scene.
02:02I mean, you can describe it.
02:04So Nick is standing actually with a coat draped over him.
02:08And then there's the carriage behind him.
02:10And as the camera's right here, the carriage comes apart.
02:14And his legs are pulled out so that then the castle doors are behind him.
02:18Now we're in a castle in the Czech Republic called Pernstein Castle.
02:23That's in Moravia.
02:24And we built all the interiors of the castle.
02:27But we needed the gatehouse and the courtyard as locations.
02:30And this castle, I went and it was really fantastic.
02:34But I found out that Werner Herzog shot his Nosferatu there.
02:38So I refused to shoot at the castle because I didn't want to use Herzog's castle again.
02:42So then we scouted like tons more castles.
02:45And they all sucked.
02:46And the location manager was like, look, dude, like Pernstein Castle is the castle that looks
02:51like right for the movie.
02:53You just have to suck it up.
02:54So then we went to the castle again.
02:56And on the way back, I was scrubbing through Werner Herzog's Nosferatu and realized that
03:02the places that we wanted to use weren't in the Herzog film.
03:05So we were able to use the castle, tip our hat to Herzog, but not shoot it the same way.
03:10And in fact, these gates here are gates that Craig Lathrop and the rest of the production
03:17design team brought in because I wanted even like bigger, more impressive gates that were
03:22actually at the castle.
03:23So we built like these gates in front of the gates to make it bigger.
03:28Bigger is better when it comes to castle gates.
03:30I would like to imagine you going to castles and be like, this place sucks.
03:33And what was wrong with the castle?
03:35They weren't atmospheric enough.
03:37There was one that was cool, but you had to climb a mile long staircase to get up there.
03:42That's not ideal for filming.
03:45The snow is made from potato flakes, like freeze dried mashed potatoes and coat of arms
03:52once again.
03:53The snow, I'm sure I heard a story at some point about you watching snow in different
03:57movies and finding like the last few bags of snow in the 90s or something.
04:01OK, so basically there is a thing called a snow candle that is like a bucket that you
04:06light on fire and swing around.
04:08And then like snow goes all over the place.
04:10Almost like ash.
04:11Yeah.
04:11And that's like Ridley Scott movies.
04:13Like that's the snow that he uses.
04:15And I used it on The Northman.
04:16But in between The Northman and Nosferatu, that snow became illegal because the gas that
04:21makes the snow flow is toxic.
04:23Fun fact.
04:24Production thought, OK, well, we're going to have to have to use CG snow.
04:27And I refused to use CG snow.
04:29And so, yeah, so then I was angrily watching a movie from the 1940s called The Queen of
04:35Spades with some bourbon.
04:37And there's like beautiful, beautiful snow.
04:39And I'm taking pictures on my phone and sending it to the snow effects guys being like, come
04:44on, put these in the 40s.
04:46And yeah, it was these potato flakes things.
04:48And basically they stopped doing it in the 90s.
04:50So, yes, we bought all of the potato flakes snow in Europe to make this movie.
04:55So no one will ever have better snow ever again.
04:59Ever again.
04:59Ever again.
05:00There's something else interesting here.
05:02Jaron, the DP, his lighting of this moonlight lighting, he used a concave or convex mirror
05:08in the sky that he bounced the light off of to create it.
05:10This was something you developed on The Northman too, right?
05:12Yeah, yeah.
05:13To basically get like a light ray that is closer to the large size that would come from
05:18like the moon.
05:19Was it a concave or convex?
05:22Convex.
05:22Convex.
05:23I could draw that.
05:26But you get the idea.
05:27This was an intimidating scene to know that I was going to have to shoot.
05:31People have said like, what's, is it hard to do something that's been done a lot of
05:34times?
05:35And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
05:36Because there's so many Draculas and Nosferatu's, like sometimes there's a lot of things that
05:41never ever work, you know, in the story.
05:43So you're like, oh, here's my opportunity to explore that.
05:46But this scene of Hutter or Harker going to Dracula's castle, like has been done well
05:52many times.
05:52So this was quite intimidating.
05:55And a big part of making it work was the music.
05:57So obviously there's this big crescendo as the doors open.
06:03Kind of aleatoric 20th century classical music horror sound, but also has some kind of nods
06:08to James Bernard Hammer horror.
06:11But things get a little bit more abstract and a little bit more quiet and dreamlike
06:15as the doors open.
06:18That's Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok, obviously.
06:21They're shown in silhouette and at a distance.
06:24Remember, you're talking about this bow, but it's not actually a realistic kind of bow
06:28as I normally would.
06:29It's more like he's compelling me to do it subconsciously.
06:32I think, you know, something that as much as I'm a massive, massive fan of Murnau films,
06:38something that is slightly ludicrous about it is that, you know, Max Schreck's vampire
06:44looks like a freak.
06:45And Hutter comes to his house and very nice to meet you and has a meal and it's fine and
06:50doesn't run away screaming.
06:52And in our version, Bill Skarsgård is very much a vampire of folklore from a time when
06:59people actually believed in vampires and thought that they were real.
07:03And these early folk vampires look like putrid walking corpses.
07:08And if you were a putrid corpse, you wouldn't want your house guests to know that you were
07:15that.
07:16I try not to let them know.
07:18So Warlock's always kept at a distance to kind of conceal his identity.
07:24And there is also a build up to, you know, finally revealing him.
07:28Yeah, I remember talking about that when we get inside the castle as well.
07:30Him always being in the shadows and for Thomas not fully being able to understand what he's
07:34gone into and still having some sort of doubt.
07:37Yeah.
07:37That he would stay.
07:39That he would stay for dinner and not turn around straight away and start screaming.
07:42So this is Thomas thinking, this is fine.
07:48Magic.
07:52If you notice, as Warlock walks away, we don't hear his footsteps at all.
07:59A little bit of a nod to the silent film.
08:01But then, of course, the sound design comes back more naturalistically with the scraping
08:04sound of the door.
08:08Also, this shot from behind was not storyboarded.
08:11Jared and I infamously like storyboard everything to death and then do what has been
08:17storyboarded by Adam Pescott, the storyboard artist.
08:20But this shot of the doors closing, Chris Columbus, the creative producer who is known
08:25for directing Harry Potter and Home Alone and writing the Gremlins, ran up to me and was
08:30like, check out this shot from behind.
08:32And I was like, that's a really good idea.
08:34And thank God we did, because we really need it.
08:37Because of the feeling of watching Thomas kind of enter and get trapped.
08:41I mean, yeah, you know, it's game over, clearly.
08:43Bidum-dum-dum.
08:43Oh, spooky sound there, too.