It’s incredibly difficult to balance the visual aesthetics of fantasy and reality in a film — but cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi seems to have perfected the craft, making it her signature style.
Arizmendi’s work covers a wide array of forms and genres — it’s hard to imagine what she can’t do. She’s shot music videos for artists like Leonard Cohen, Owlle, and Halsey; commercial work for Givenchy, Rolex, and Vogue; and a handful of short films. And in the last few years, Arizmendi has made the transition to larger film projects, specifically horror.
In her debut feature, “Cam,” and her most recent feature, “Swallow,” Arizmendi captures worlds and characters with a chilling stillness that is ultimately guided by smart, dynamic lighting choices.
It’s clear that lighting is always on Arizmendi’s mind: not just from watching her work, but from hearing her talk about her process as a whole. Following camgirl Lola (Madeline Brewer), whose identity gets stolen online by someone eerily similar to herself, “Cam” was the first feature project for Arizmendi, director Daniel Goldhaber, and screenwriter Isa Mazzei. But with that newness comes a refreshing vision. The visual aesthetic of “Cam” is commanded by hot pink halogens and stark contrasts, depicting the horror of the film’s plot and the real world of online sex work via a candy-coated fantasy.
“I feel we could have gone crazier with the unmotivated lighting, but at the same time there was this fine line we didn’t want to cross where the cam world could still be real,” Arizmendi told Filmmaker Magazine. “It’s especially believable in this digital world. Having a website with so much video footage of you that they could digitally clone you is not that far off. So not taking it too far in a stylized way made that scarier, I think.”
In Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ “Swallow,” the palette starts off comparably more muted. The film follows a young housewife, Hunter (Haley Bennet,) as she grapples with a loss of control over her own autonomy, which is signaled by selective color choices that, in turn, represent the singularity of her domesticity. But as the film goes on, there is a lot of room for Arizmendi to experiment visually and thematically.
“She has less control over her world as she goes into the outside world,” Arizmendi told ARRI. “So, colors start to mix, then we bring in some greens and some warmer colors, neon lighting in the motel … And then eventually when she gets to the mall, it’s a whole cluster of color. It’s kind of chaotic in a way.”
Both “Swallow” and “Cam” film mirrors and reflections in an impactful way. In “Swallow,” most of the film takes place in an extravagant home with large windows, almost like a glass cage. When filming Hunter from the outside, there is a wash of glare that obstructs your vision of her, in a way reinforcing her feelings of being trapped and out of touch with the world. In “Cam,” the climactic scene between Lola and her double is dependent on how her reflection — both in the mirror and through her webcam — is shot and stylized.
Even with just a few features under her belt, Arizmendi has explored various visual styles and has cemented herself as someone to pay attention to. “I think I’ve gone through lighting phases,” she told MusicBed. “I started out doing crazy colors and gels and things like that. Then I moved toward more natural lighting … I go through these phases where I do something too much and then I need to switch it up.”
Angel Manuel Soto’s Sundance hit “Charm City Kids” and Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated adaptation of “Dune” are among Arizmendi’s other credits. She’s also attached to serve as cinematographer on Oscar-nominated DP Rachel Morrison’s feature directorial debut, boxing drama “Flint Strong.”
“Swallow” is available on VOD, and “Cam” is available on Netflix.
