In this scene in Universal's 2020 film
"The Invisible Man," Elisabeth Moss' character
is thrown across the dining-room table by the monster.
Nailing this shot wasn't easy.
It involved two stunt performers,
one of whom was in a green suit;
various ropes; a VFX team;
and the precise movements of a
robotic, motion-controlled camera.
Now compare that to the original 1933 film.
The main character is also "invisible,"
and while they did use some practical effects
to move objects around, for most of the movie,
he's simply covered in bandages.
The new movie couldn't rely on just
hidden strings and bandages for a cheap scare.
It shakes you to the core by using
innovative effects and smart filmmaking techniques
to make the audience terrified
of something they can't even see.
An upgrade to a classic monster
that is much more real and terrifying this time around.
Now, warning: spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the movie.
To see how far we've come, we have to look back
to 1933 and to this man, Claude Rains.
He's the actor who played
the invisible man in that film.
To create the illusion that Rains was invisible,
the filmmakers wrapped parts of him in black velvet
and filmed him in front of a black background.
This made whatever part of his body
that was supposed to be invisible
seem to disappear.
Officer: Look, he's all eaten away.
Narrator: Otherwise, the rest of his clothes
appeared to float in the air,
a gimmicky look they tried to avoid in the new film.
For the 2020 remake, they decided to make
the invisible man, Adrian Griffin,
completely invisible, making him
a more mysterious and unknown figure.
And thanks to technological advances
in the decades between the two films,
they could do it.
But Elisabeth Moss and the rest of the cast
still had to have something to react to.
This required a stunt performer in a green suit.
The stuntman would help guide the actors
and interact with them for the fight scenes,
like the one in the kitchen.
They used a robotic camera rig
that could be programmed to shoot each take
with the exact same timing and movement.
This allowed them to capture
both the take with the stuntman
and one clean take without him.
Editors could then merge the two shots
and digitally erase him afterwards.
Let's look at that kitchen scene again
as an example of how this technique would work.
First, they would film Moss
as she was about to be thrown.
Then they would swap her out with a stuntwoman.
She would be attached to a rope for support,
and the stuntman in the green suit
would throw her across the table.
They would swap in Moss again
and stitch the three shots together,
removing the stuntman and rope from the clip.
Removing an actor in a green suit, however,
was difficult to do perfectly
with so many moving parts.
So they also digitally reconstructed
some of the background to make the final shot cleaner.
As director Leigh Whannell said in an interview
with "The Big Picture" podcast,
"It's actually easier to add in a werewolf later
than it is to subtract a stunt performer in a green suit."
By rendering him completely invisible,
it was up to the audience to guess where he was,
without a floating hat or sunglasses to guide them.
And when he made himself known through violence,
it felt more like a real person
was actually there attacking,
which made the new film much more unsettling
than the original.
But not every scene required the actor in a green suit.
Some of the most tension-filled moments
were the ambiguous ones, when the audience
doesn't know if Adrian is there or not.
This required some clever cinematography.
One way they made the invisible man
seem so real without using any VFX
was through frequent, calculated panning shots.
In most films, regardless of the genre,
the camera pans to a specific character or object
to focus the audience's attention.
Take a look at this scene from "The Revenant."
The camera pans to the left
to show the bear approaching Hugh from the woods.
And in "The Shining," while Danny is hiding in the maze,
we see the camera pan to the path,
showing his father limping around with an ax.
We as the audience have come to expect
someone or something to be in this space after a pan.
But "The Invisible Man" subverts our expectations
and pans to nothingness. Just an empty space.
When the camera stops,
Adrian should be there, but he isn't.
And this creates a sense of uneasiness for the viewer,
putting us in the mind of Cecilia,
where we also feel haunted by an invisible threat.
The other key to making the cinematography scary
was to use the negative space.
Basically, they filmed lots of empty spaces
where the character might be,
even though you can't actually see him,
and the audience is never quite sure.
Much of this was accomplished through unusual framing,
leaving extra space around or behind Cecilia.
You assume he's standing in the corner
or sitting in the chair,
which makes the audience uneasy.
For example, look at the interrogation scene.
The corner of the room is bare and in frame.
Cecilia and the audience assume he's standing
right there in the shot, listening to everything.
One of the kitchen scenes is a wide still shot.
It lingers there for a long time
after Cecilia leaves the frame.
This was intended to be a moment
for the audience to frantically search the image
for any signs of Adrian.
Whannell says he wanted you to be afraid
you would miss something.
The director confirmed that the invisible man
is in most of those shots,
but only he knows exactly which ones.
And there are only a few where the character
is not present where we think he might be.
Aside from using the camera to film negative spaces,
they also used it as if it was a character of its own
at certain points in the movie.
The same robotic, motion-controlled camera
used for the kitchen scene we mentioned earlier
had precise, controlled movements, just like Adrian,
since the camera represents his presence
in a lot of the movie.
For example, in the hallway scene
at the psychiatric hospital,
watch as it quickly darts back and forth
and even bends to the side.
You feel like you're looking through Adrian's eyes
as he goes on his murder spree.
It has quicker movements than handheld cameras,
with odd, jarring angles.
Using a robotic camera meant that actors
had to get their timing right
and hit their marks perfectly,
because the camera doesn't stop.
It's programmed to go through a specific
set of motions at a specific pace.
By combining all of these elements,
Whannell created a believable, terrifying character
that we think is on screen but hardly ever see,
without requiring any gimmicky bandages
or clichéd, spooky, dark sets.
"The Invisible Man" managed to turn
a small $7 million budget into a big scare.
And it worked, ultimately,
because it's often what isn't there
that can scare you the most.