Interview with Mr. Crocket cinematographer Powell Robinson

For Hulu audiences seeking a thrill this season, Brandon Espy's Mr. Crocket promises to deliver a terrifying and imaginative take on childhood nightmares.

As Mr. Crocket, portrayed with chilling charisma by Elvis Nolasco, manipulates and ensnares his young viewers, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Shot with haunting precision by cinematographer Powell Robinson, the film dives deep into the unsettling world of a mother’s desperate journey to save her son from the clutches of a sinister children’s show host.

1428 Elm: How did you approach the visual style for Mr. Crocket, particularly in blending the supernatural elements with the real-world setting?

POWELL ROBINSON: We started with Brandon’s reference movies, Juice and Menace II Society. Obviously, we can’t incorporate every element of those movies because they are in a very different genre, but we stole the pieces that made sense to give the film its ‘90s aesthetic and then wove them in with interesting parts of the horror tropes.

There is a party scene at the beginning of Menace II Society lit with all purple and red lights. The second I saw it, I called Brandon and said this has to be the color combo for the portal. So we took a ‘normal’ element of one of the reference dramas and turned it into this cosmic horror-looking part of Crocket.

We continued cherry-picking other 90’s lighting techniques like vibrant blue moonlight, and once we put all of these together, we ended up with a unique and vibrant color palette that isn’t necessarily common for a horror film.

1428 ELM: What were your key influences or inspirations for creating the dark and eerie atmosphere that surrounds the demonic children's show host?

POWELL ROBINSON: What’s funny about that is we actually tended to ramp up the colors when Crocket would show up places, which is antithetical to how most people would do a horror movie, where it would lean darker and bleaker surrounding the aesthetic of the villain. We leaned into this idea of him bringing his evil Pee-Wee’s Playhouse vibe wherever he went.

In the opening scene, there is a moment when the light starts flickering and the saturation jumps 20 percent. We used the lights flickering to hide it. When he pops into that dining room, suddenly, the whole world changes – it’s subtle enough you don’t know exactly what changed, but you feel something is different. That’s why we went with the red/purple portal as well — We could have gone with a Poltergeist blue or bleaker white light, but it felt so right to always have him bring this eerie saturation with him.

In hell world specifically, the idea was to take the exact same lighting set-up we used to light his happy-looking Mr. Crocket show world set and then tear it down and make it messy and scary like a bomb went off in there. We dropped and slanted the rigging rails, panned the lights in different directions, and also programmed all the units to have a crazy oscillating pattern that made them all not only feel a lot warmer but like the whole world was constantly either shifting or on fire.

Again, you can’t tell exactly what it is. Because we didn’t go with a simple fire effect and motivated it off of the set lights, it gives him this evil, circus ringleader vibe. He’s still on his show, but now it’s in hell.

Visual motifs

1428 ELM: Were there specific visual motifs or recurring shots that symbolized the mother’s emotional state throughout the film?

POWELL ROBINSON: Often, I was just trying to let Jerrika perform in spaces that were lit more like that 90’s period without forcing an emotional visually by pushing a certain color or style of shot. I knew she would always be able to drive the scene emotionally so if I focused on the period-feeling, and hand in hand we created scenes both emotional and out of the right era.

1428 ELM: How did you use color to differentiate between the mother's world and the otherworldly environment controlled by Mr. Crocket?

POWELL ROBINSON: It comes down to selectively choosing saturation and the realism of where the sources are coming from and how they feel. Our 90’s drama references were shot with some heightened-realism aspects, but overall, they were very grounded (save things like the blue moon). Every time Crocket comes in, we had to keep the previous scene a little toned down so it would be extra striking when the color comes with him. In his world, we consistently used vibrant red tones we don’t have anywhere else in the movie.

Honestly, we used lighting gags, more than color to show Crocket’s influence – when he comes into the real world, all the lights flicker. Then, when we go to his world, there is an amped-up version of that concept where every light is broken and constantly pulsing. It’s taking all the principles of what we have done and amping them up to 1,000—basically saying, you thought you knew what happened when he comes in our world, but wait until you see what his is actually like.

We also did something fun, but very subtle in post. When we initially graded the movie, we had a thick heavy grain texture over most of it. My colorist, Damien, realized it was distracting in the main part of the movie, but we decided we should leave it in hell world because it feels appropriate there. It feels like there is a difference in era almost, like we’re now watching something on a ‘70s film stock, which was the time period of his show’s release, versus the ‘90s era film grade of the main part of the movie.

1428 ELM: What were some of the challenges you faced in creating visually intense scenes with supernatural elements, and how did you overcome them?

POWELL ROBINSON: The cool thing about Crocket was that a lot of the supernatural elements were on set. These were puppets I actually got to light and film, so it was a far better experience for me than if they all had been CG. I knew what I was up against right when we would do the blocking rehearsal, like the big blue puppet for instance. His blue fur under the red skylight wasn’t really reading, so we learned we had to add something extra, more neutral when the blue fur was on screen to bring it out more.

The other fun part about it was that what wasn’t fully practical was fully in my control lighting-look-wise. When Crocket comes into the world, I was able to choose how we wanted to program the portal lights to strobe to feel otherworldly, as well as the speed/erratic quality of the practical lights on set, shorting out and flickering before he arrives.

For the portal, there was technically a physical doorway on set, but there was no preview done to know exactly how the portal was going to look in post. Art just gave me a frame of wood, and I stuck tubes all around it. I just tried to imagine what was possible with VFX later.

I approached this is the way I approach every shoot when I do big green screen music videos and commercials — you have to set yourself eight months ahead of what the movie is going to look like when it’s done. You think about what the movie should be and then work backward. It’s always a lot of fun to imagine if I was an audience member for this movie, what would I want it to be like?

1428 ELM: How did you approach the camera work in scenes with children to emphasize their vulnerability while enhancing the horror aspect?

POWELL ROBINSON: The fun thing about working with kids is while they can be really great actors, they are also just kids. So they bring a lot of vulnerability and spontaneousness. The best thing you can do is just stay out of their way. Don’t box them into a perfect mark they have to hit every single time. Don’t give them too many blocking notes in between takes, give them the room to play around a bit because that’s how you are going to get the best performance out of them. If something is horribly messing you up, it’s worth bringing it up to the director, but at the end of the day, you just have to give them the space.

Balancing horror and drama

1428 ELM: How closely did you work with the director in developing the visual language for the film, particularly for scenes that blend horror and emotional drama?

POWELL ROBINSON: Brandon and I both live in LA, so from very early on we were meeting up to burn through the whole shot list before we got out to New Jersey to start pre-production and shoot. A lot of our early conversations were about how do we go from these emotional dramatic story elements into the Nightmare on Elm Street horror tone.

Brandon really wanted to use a lot of handheld, which I love in emotional scenes. It’s a fun dance that we all get to do together. Interestingly, there is also a good amount of handheld intoo, so it just became a main part of the Crocket visual language. We would, however, talk about what the difference was emotionally between a handheld shot versus a slow creep on a dolly or slider. It always came down to whose perspective we are seeing everything from and why we are trying to make you feel the way we are.

1428 ELM: Were there any specific moments where the performance of the actors influenced how you framed or lit a scene?

POWELL ROBINSON: From day one, we were given the heads-up. Elvis would be full method as Mr. Crocket for the entire shoot. That comes with the challenge of not wanting to get in the way of his process, but with a movie like Crocket which has a very defined look, we have to
maintain it.

For the Mr. Crocket show itself, we basically treated it like it was going to be an actual live broadcast kind of set. We lit the whole stage with 30 tungsten units or more, a ring of fire style set up for a classic broadcast, and blasted them with light. Instead of the signature primes that we had been using during the rest of the movie, we jumped onto zooms. We lived on a fisher dolly in dance floor mode and moved around like we were on a multi-cam show. We gave him the room to run the Crocket show as if it were a real kid's show.

We knew from the beginning his performance would have to guide how that went. So as long as I gave him 40 square feet of stage he could play in, we have a cool, traditional feeling show on our hands. I would say that’s the most clear moment in the movie where performance ‘designed’ the look.

The rest of the time it came down to watching blocking and seeing if there are any fun moments I could accentuate with a certain strobe of a light here or a flicker there when Crocket came in. Or where I could place the portal to give a cool illumination to the whole scene that would work to both make Crocket look scary and also let us move fast because this was a tight budget shoot.

1428 ELM: Were there any unique or experimental techniques you employed to give certain scenes a haunting or disorienting feel, particularly those featuring Mr. Crocket?

POWELL ROBINSON: The dream sequence in the middle of the movie when Summer wakes up and sees her dead husband — we wanted it to initially almost feel like it could be real, but the second you look at the windows and the fog/haze around them, all the light sources are a pulsing, vibrant blue – Hellraiser definitely was an influence for this moment.

That was one of the fun ones to amp up the feeling that we weren’t beholden to any sort of realism and I could just do whatever I wanted. It was fun to take how we lit her bedroom previously and make it the nightmare version. That’s how we approached hell world as well, what’s the comforting version of this and now let’s flip it on its head and make it the scary version.

1428 ELM: Can you explain the decision behind the use of practical effects versus CGI, especially in capturing the more fantastical elements of Mr. Crocket's world?

POWELL ROBINSON: That was a decision made very early on, even prior to me signing on. A staple of kid’s shows back then was that these were just people in big mascot suits. When it wasn’t that, it was hand puppetry like we had with Squawky bird, puppeteered like a classic Henson character on set.

It all comes down to passion for wanting to feel as authentic as possible. And there was the budget to consider when thinking about doing something like the Squawky scare sequence in CGI which would have been completely unaffordable. But this was the best part about doing a movie set in this time period—you are able to make the camp make sense. It enhances the whole feeling of watching the film. Budgetary limitations aside, it’s just more fun and more inspiring for the actors on set to work with the actual creatures.