When J.J. Abrams‘ production company, Bad Robot, tossed out a teaser trailer for a tantalizingly mysterious new project, it didn’t take long for pop culture vultures to peck away as if it were a juicy porterhouse left by the side of the highway. Since Hollywood feels the same way about secrets as nature does about vacuums, speculation about what exactly this spot is teasing has turned into a digital cage match in comments sections across the web. And while we can’t confirm or deny any of the out-there theories circulating about the nature of the project. Is it a “Lost” spin-off? Or a tease for NBC’s “Believe“?
As the teaser says, Soon we will know. In the meantime, we have gotten ahold of one meaty tidbit worth sharing: The teaser’s cinematographer is Chris Saul, a 2010 alum of Art Center’s Graduate Film department. Below, Saul re-traces the path that lead him to find this creepy stiched-mouth character on an abandoned beach at night.
About four years ago, a friend introduced me to Stephen Reedy, who wrote and directed “The Forge” — a great project I was fortunate to shoot last year. Stephen worked with a very successful trailer editor named Jenn Horvath, who worked on the trailer for “Mission Impossible III” and met some younger producers at J.J. Abrams’ company who were hungry to make some content. She recommended me to them; and I started doing small insignificant projects. Then, about a year and a half ago, I got a call from one of the guys at Bad Robot who hired me to shoot a three-day short film with director Andrew Kramer, who does all the title sequences for most of J.J.’s movies and has a website called VideoCoPilot, which is the biggest online tutorial site for AfterEffects.
Six months later I shot a teaser for a famous band through Bad Robot. And just last month I got a call from two producers Josh Tate and Andrew Lee, who asked me if I wanted to shoot a top secret trailer. Of course I was in. Anything they have going on, I’m in. It definitely feels like I’m living the dream when I get to work with one of the biggest production companies in the business.
The director of this piece is named Stefan Grube. I’m pretty sure this was J.J. Abrams’ idea to shoot. He wasn’t on set; but he had a very strong presence in terms of what we needed to shoot and how we needed to shoot it.
We shot the piece over the course of a night on a beach with a Red Epic camera with Cooke S5 lenses courtesy of Keslow Camera. We had a very limited budget and only had one balloon light and a few lenses. I had no crew for lighting. Just a first assistant camera and a couple of production assistants to help carry gear. Some of the best shots involved me putting myself in waste-deep water. Because of the limited light available to us, I knew the only way I was going to get interesting footage was if I risked getting wet so I could shoot directly into the light. Often, we would start a shot and when a wave came I would hold the camera over my head to avoid it getting wet.
We are planning on shooting a follow-up to this piece, hopefully this week. This was very exciting for me because its the first thing I’ve done to became an official video for Bad Robot. And the added bonus is that it kick-started the company’s official YouTube page. It’s just great knowing that J.J. viewed my work and approved it.
