Ari Weg­n­er on how she cre­at­ed The Pow­er of the Dog’s visu­al identity

Ari Weg­n­er is fast becom­ing one of the most excit­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phers around. From William Oldroyd’s Lady Mac­beth and Peter Strickland’s In Fab­ric to Jan­icza Bravo’s Zola and Jane Campion’s The Pow­er of the Dog, her work is high­ly imag­i­na­tive, var­ied and always evolv­ing. We’ll next see her behind the cam­era for Sebastián Lelio’s The Won­der and Oldroyd’s sec­ond fea­ture, but before then she spoke to us about the The Pow­er of the Dog.

“I real­ly like to start afresh on each film and take the lessons from the last project but not take any of the visu­al ideas or rules or approach­es. I real­ly try and start com­plete­ly fresh with the script and the direc­tor, com­plete­ly open-mind­ed to what they’re think­ing and I’m imag­in­ing. I love vari­ety and I real­ly love mor­ph­ing the way I work to suit how a direc­tor wants to work because I real­ly believe that the way a direc­tor works is so spe­cif­ic to them. How a direc­tor likes to work infus­es into the film and I real­ly enjoy as I’m get­ting to know some­one begin­ning to under­stand not only how they want the film to look, but how they want the shoot to look. In many ways, I feel the DoP is an advo­cate for that because it’s not a giv­en that a film shoot will morph to how a direc­tor wants to work.”

“I’d met Jane pre­vi­ous­ly when we worked on a real­ly short com­mer­cial togeth­er, so when she called me we knew each oth­er but not that well. The first thing she said was that she’d read this book, and that she was adapt­ing it into a screen­play, and would I be inter­est­ed in talk­ing about it. The main thing she want­ed was a DP that was going to be avail­able through­out the next year, and I didn’t know what form that would take, whether it would be a cou­ple of con­ver­sa­tions or some­thing more. But the first thing I did was read the book, and I com­plete­ly fell in love with it. That was before I’d even read Jane’s screenplay.

“The first thing she want­ed to do was get out on the road and find the loca­tion, because she real­ly knew the place had to work and had to work as for real as pos­si­ble, with­out cheat­ing too much. That said we were look­ing in New Zealand for a farm that was sup­posed to be in Mon­tana, but we want­ed to find some­thing that would evoke the spir­it of what you feel in the book, but also had a moun­tain range that felt pow­er­ful and icon­ic. Our first con­ver­sa­tions were in the back of a van, between me, Jane and Grant Major the pro­duc­tion design­er, just dri­ving around for days look­ing at dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties. Jane’s a great explor­er, so there’s a lot of ​‘Ooh, let’s go down that road, that looks cool!’ and jump­ing out, walk­ing up hills.”

“After we found the place, we dove into what the chal­lenges would be. I real­ly love that about Jane because I can be a ter­ri­ble pro­cras­ti­na­tor. Everyone’s nat­ur­al instinct to start with the thing that will be the most fun, and ignore the things that will be hard­er or more daunt­ing. One of the first things we talked about was ​‘The Dog’ and the town of Beech; the two biggest wor­ries from the visu­al effects side. The next scary thing was cat­tle. Jane’s quite an out­doorsy per­son, she grew up around hors­es and cat­tle, so she has some kind of idea that when the scene says ​‘thou­sands of cat­tle go over the ridge’ it’s eas­i­er said than done. One of the oth­er things I learned about Jane is that she real­ly gets excit­ed about things she doesn’t know. She’s very con­fi­dent in say­ing ​‘I don’t know’ and find­ing experts to give us the information.

“Then we start­ed talk­ing about colour, which was anoth­er big con­ver­sa­tion. The great thing about hav­ing a year of pre-pro­duc­tion was that we could sleep on some­thing for a month and real­ly mull it over, think about the best choice, get more infor­ma­tion. We explored every pos­si­ble option, we looked at black-and-white, we looked at more Tech­ni­colour inten­si­ty, try­ing to do a hand-coloured look, and made a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent palettes of colour approach­es with old pho­tos and paint­ings and post­cards. We were drawn to this palette I’d prob­a­bly call ​‘dusty’ – the colour of the grass, the cat­tle, the tim­ber of the build­ings. Those sun-bleached colours, with the idea that Rose would stand out with her pas­tel pinks and yellows.”

“We thought about 16:9, because as much as Jane is a roman­tic she’s also a real­ist and knows that so many peo­ple enjoy watch­ing things at home. We explored whether we should make it the per­fect shape for the home expe­ri­ence, or go more 4:3, do some­thing total­ly unex­pect­ed for a film set in such a vast land­scape. Then we start­ed doing sto­ry­boards, and as Jane was draw­ing she kept going off the edges of the rec­tan­gu­lar board tem­plates. Even­tu­al­ly, we realised this film real­ly want­ed to be widescreen. We did think about the fact it would have a home on a stream­ing ser­vice, but I think peo­ple are open to a cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence at home.”

“In many ways it’s like a mon­ster movie. We want­ed the audi­ence – and Rose and Peter – to be con­stant­ly aware of Phil’s pres­ence, and think­ing about where he is. What they’re going through, it’s nev­er gonna end – it’s their life now. They’ve entered into this world. On the sur­face there’s visu­al ele­ments of the west­ern, but as a film I don’t think it quite fits, just because the typ­i­cal themes of the west­ern were not so much things that we were inter­est­ed in. In west­erns, the dan­ger often comes from the out­side, whether it’s the sher­iff or the out­law or some­one that wants your land. In our film the dan­ger comes from with­in the fam­i­ly unit, with­in the house. Nowhere is safe. We kept the house quite dark, so there’s a feel­ing Phil could be around any cor­ner. For exam­ple, we knew we want­ed it so that from Phil’s room you can see the piano, like that kind of visu­al con­nec­tion. There’s so many doors every­where in the house, but it’s impos­si­ble to feel real­ly safe there.”

“There was no get­ting around the cat­tle. Some of the guys who play cow­boys in the film were real ranch­ers: there was one guy Jane met at a rodeo in Mon­tana; anoth­er who works in North­ern Queens­land where there’s a lot of cat­tle. We had to get some peo­ple who were real­ly com­fort­able being on a horse sur­round­ed by cat­tle. You can’t act that kind of con­fi­dence. Cat­tle are inter­est­ing because they’re a prey ani­mal – they’re a big ani­mal that’s quite afraid, which makes them hard to train. But they’re also very curi­ous, and when they’re calm they’re real­ly cute.

“It took a lot of plan­ning. Like, how many times do you need to see a lot of cat­tle to believe and under­stand that this is what this fam­i­ly does? And what tone and atmos­phere do you want that scene to cre­ate? In the first scene with the cat­tle being tak­en to Beech, we were try­ing to cre­ate a sense of place and scale, as well as a sense of time pass­ing. But the actu­al through line is Phil try­ing to get George’s atten­tion; the cat­tle are sort of a back­ground excuse for one broth­er to try and elic­it some nos­tal­gic thoughts from the other.

“Then there’s the scene with the cas­tra­tion. It’s real­ly about emas­cu­la­tion and dom­i­na­tion, and it’s no coin­ci­dence it hap­pens just before Peter arrives at the ranch. It’s a real moment of male-on-male vio­lence, and fore­shad­ows this idea of the space not being big enough for more than one male pres­ence. We had a great visu­al effects super­vi­sor too, Jay Hawkins, who we worked with very close­ly to under­stand to what extent we could do dig­i­tal cows, nev­er as the main event but as an addi­tion. There’s actu­al­ly a lot of real cows, but then a lot of cow clones. You can’t see them! I’ve even for­got­ten which cows are what.”

The Pow­er of the Dog is now stream­ing on Net­flix. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.