The way The Lighthouse looks is not a creative decision. It's an engineering project.
The film is set in 1890, when cameras used orthochromatic film, stock that couldn't see red. On set, that meant skin recorded "every pore and blood vessel," clouds went pale, and open sky went blindingly light. To replicate that look, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke sent a spectrograph to Schneider Optics and had them manufacture custom short-pass filters. They delivered within a month.
The production shot on Kodak Double-X 5222, the same film stock used in Raging Bull, which needs roughly twenty times more light than a digital camera. The 1.19:1 aspect ratio existed only in 1929. The cottage set was eight feet in diameter.
Every strange texture you see in that image was engineered to simulate photography from 130 years ago.
It keeps landing in Backlot lists. If it's sitting in yours, this is the week.
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