Cinematographer Nick Matthews talked about his friendship with director Kevin Greutert and how staying true to the originalSawfilm helped his creative process when craftingSaw X. The tenthSawoutingis the latest iteration in the franchise and surrounds a group of con artists in Mexico who are trapped and tortured by a man who seeks revenge. The film stars Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Steven Brand, Synnøve Macody Lund, Renata Vaca, and Michael Beach.
Before joining the project, Matthews worked on music videos, a gritty crime drama,Cuck, andSpoonful of Sugar, a horror film on the Shudder platform. In a recent interview withScreenrant, Matthews explained that Greutert helped him acclimate to theSawfranchise and his directing style. Greutert has edited sixSawmovies, including the original, and directed three, includingSaw X.
“I think, for Kevin, I felt very much in safe hands, because the way he edits is he goes through every single piece of footage and subclips everything that’s potentially usable, and then whittles away and then whittles away and whittles away. That’s his process on every movie he cuts, but I think that could also describe how he works as a director.”
The Los Angeles-based cinematographer praised Greutert for his extensive knowledge and passion fortheSawmovies.
“Kevin was just fantastic, he understands, in order for the traps to work, you have to have a very linear, upfront sort of explanation via Jigsaw. Then also, the cutting is very straightforward, you want the audience to understand the stakes, so that they’re able to invest in it and place themselves there. It’s those sorts of things, but he also knows the characters, he’s just an encyclopedia of knowledge, really, and also a genuine cinephile.”
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How the Original Saw Aesthetic Inspired Nick Matthews
When Matthews first joined the project, he and Greutert wanted to return to the visuals of the originalSawmovie.
“We had a good time, and I think for me, I knew when I was hired that the franchise had sort of deviated from what made the early films so successful. They tried other things, they tried other visual style, some were shot in anamorphic, and things like that, and so Kevin and I talked about it. We really wanted it to feel like a fit between 1 and 2, and so a lot of what I was trying to do was take the palates of 1 and 2 and find a way to bring them into this film, but then give them their own arc.”
For him, the challenge was making the visuals look dirty and gritty compared to previous films,SpiralandJigsaw.
“For me, Spiral and Jigsaw are too clean, they’re too modern for what we wanted, so it was, “How do we photographically bring in this dirtiness, this grittiness, this grime?” This is something that I specifically feel, but I’m very interested in photographing beauty and brutality, and I sort of love playing with both of those, and making one sort of fit into the other. It’s the same challenge that the first Saw film has, and I guess technically the second, but it’s predominantly one space, how do you keep it visually interesting the entire time, and then, also, how do you craft something that makes you feel like you need a tetanus shot?”
To emulate the original aesthetics, for example,in the Eyeball trap scene, Matthews and Greutert brought back the circular dolly track for a more “dreamy” effect.
“They kind of got away from doing circular dolly track and some of those, for lack of a better word, stutter frame feeling in those flash frames, and we were like, “No, let’s go back to it, let’s bring it back.” It’s a great way to build intensity, it’s a great way to make it feel visually kinetic, and so what we actually did for a lot of those stutter frames is shot under crank, so we shoot it at six frames a second, then we lengthen the shutter speed, so we’d shoot with a shutter speed of like 270 degree shutter, or I don’t know what that’d do with the math. It basically gives it this really dreamy effect, and then when you play it back at 24, it’s really sped up.”
