How DP “Pure Room” managed to shoot into a large white space

When “The Immaculate Room” cinematographer Rasa Barten was reading the script, he saw the line “Giant White Room” and didn’t think anything of it. “Sure, it’s a giant white room,” says Barten. As he continued to read the pages and the story unfolded, he realized, “It’s just a white room with a bed. There’s nothing else.”

The film’s introduction, directed and written by Mukunda Michael Dewell, is simple: a young couple (Kate Bosworth and Emile Hirsch) are chosen to spend 50 days in the Immaculate Room. If they can stay in the room, without any external stimulation, they will walk away with a $5 million prize money each.

Partin’s first hurdle was how to approach filming in the White Room. Thanks to the pandemic, the shooting was delayed nine months. Normally, he’d work with a production designer, but since Dewil didn’t have one, Partin decided to do his prework with Blender Studio to visualize his ideas.

“I used it to look at the frames, the lighting, and how the recesses were used. I wanted to see what the night would look like and what the day would look like,” Bartin explains.

The renders that ended up saying it came close to what would eventually be used during production. “Planning pays off, otherwise I would have been shooting in the dark.”

Think about how sunlight will be used, and how the sun will move across the room. The night light is usually blue, but Deuel wanted Barten to think outside the box about how to use the color. Partin says, “We decided to use orange and red.”

Rasa Partin shoots comprehensible images with Blender

The next challenge for Dewil and Partin was how to keep the audience visually stimulated given that “this is just a white room, and nothing is going on somehow.” “My key in that was figuring out where feelings come from? With which actor do we need to be with him? Are we with her? Or him?” Partin adds, “It was all about getting the camera right.”

The wide shots created a sense of unity and made both characters feel small in such a large space. Meanwhile, the narrow shots helped make the characters and audience claustrophobic.

Later in the movie when Mike is bored and asks for a crayon, green is introduced. “He started painting on the walls so there’s green on white. We start using this greenish-white light in the day and continue with orange at night,” says Barten.

Partin chose the lighting colors for each character – blue and green for Kate and red for Mike, especially for the night scenes.

Rasa Barten looked at the alcoves and where to place his lighting fixtures.



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