The Lighthouse - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[beth]

Robert Eggers on the film's music: "I was looking for an aleatoric score with nods to ancient Greek music. I wanted to de-emphasize strings, and instead focus on glass and instruments you can blow into, including horns and pipes. It needed to sound like the sea. But I realized that we needed elements that would also harken back to an old movie score, so there's a nod to Bernard Herrmann."

[kristen]

The story is very loosely based on a real-life tragedy from 1801 (called "The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy"), in which two Welsh lighthouse keepers, both named Thomas, became trapped on their lighthouse station during a storm. When one man died, it is said to have driven the other mad. Other influences were seafaring literary classics by Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, and supernaturally tinged weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood.

[sandra]

Pattinson and Dafoe reached out to Robert Eggers to work with them because they loved The Witch (2015). When Eggers finished the script, it was clear to him to cast them because he had been looking for a project to do with both. Before this movie, Eggers talked with Pattinson about other roles in films (including The Knight, and Nosferatu).

[jessica]

The residents from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (where the lighthouse set was built) liked it so much that some fought to keep and maintain the fake lighthouse when filming wrapped, but it was removed because of safety issues and because it was only made out of wood.

[miriam]

Robert Eggers knew from the start that the film had to be in black and white. Even before he began writing the script, he wrote on the front page: "This film must be photographed on black & white 35mm negative, Aspect ratio: 1.19:1, Audio mix: Mono."

[maureen]

Since the film is set in 1890, it was shot on 35mm black and white Double-X 5222 film, all while augmenting the Panavision Millennium XL2 camera with vintage Baltar lenses from as early as 1918 to as late as 1938. This makes the aspect ratio approximately 1.19:1, which is practically square. To enhance the image and make it resemble early photography, a custom cyan filter made by Schneider Filters emulated the look and feel of orthochromatic film from the late 19th century.

[jamie]

Pattinson's accent is based off a very specific area of Maine farming dialect, while Dafoe's is the jargon of Atlantic fishermen and sailors of the time. Director/writer Robert Eggers was very precise about the actor's accents and line delivery. He would for example give instructions to "say the second sentence of your third line 75% faster."

[ella]

Robert Pattinson had an unusual approach to psyche himself up before emotional extreme scenes. Robert Eggers: "Sometimes he'd beat himself in the face so bad. Or when it was raining through the cottage roof, Rob was drinking the rain water in-between takes. He also spun around in circles a lot, that was helpful for him. Or he'd stick his fingers down his throat to make himself gag, stuff like that." Particular the scene where both characters are drunk and Dafoe lies on Pattinson's chest, he "was sticking his fingers down his throat (before the take). Willem gave me a look as if to say: 'If Rob f*cking pukes on me...'"

[claude]

Because it was shot on Double-X stock black and white, it requires much more light to get exposure, so they had to use about 15 to 20 times more light on set to actually see something on film. The crew put flickering 500 to 800 watt halogen bulbs in period-correct kerosene lamps that were only a few feet away from the actor's faces, resulting in the set being blindingly bright, so the actors could barely see eachother. Because of this, the crew would often wear sunglasses.

[frederick]

Pattinson's and Dafoe's facial hair was all real, but Pattinson had to dye his mustache dark because his was naturally dark blonde. Dafoe's bad teeth were a prosthetic.