Anastas Michos (‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ cinematographer): ‘Without us it would be radio’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

“Without us it would be radio,” states cinematographer Anastas Michos about his work on “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.” In our recent webchat he adds, “You cannot have a film without image.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

The Netflix anthology series comprises eight episodes, each telling a different horror story. The collection of stories were curated by Guillermo del Toro, with two being works he had written. The Oscar-winning filmmaker of “The Shape of Water” (2017) also handpicked the eight directors for the series. All the stories are dark and touch on various moral themes. Michos says, “Everybody took pride in their diversion. Guillermo left everybody alone in the way we wanted to shoot it and the palette that we shot it. But to be candid, I knew it was going to have Guillermo’s name on it first. So in the back of my head, I thought it has to fit under the umbrella of a GDT sensibility.”

Michos was cinematographer for the third installment, called “The Autopsy.” The episode is directed by David Prior and stars Oscar winning actor F. Murray Abraham. In the episode, a doctor who is examining dead miners discovers that one of the bodies is inhabited by an alien. The episode earned Michos a nomination from the American Society of Cinematographers. The director of photography reveals, “For horror films of sci-fi, the good ones have an existential question that gets explored through the genre. In this piece, it’s a story about a man knowing his own mortality, and it being slowly undermined by an entity that is an unknown. The foreboding of your own mortality and knowledge that you are not alone in the universe. That was the visual tone to strike.”

Michos reflects, “Particularly with the short format, the setting of tone was incredibly important. It was very much about setting the tone within the first moment of credit sequence. David is very much a visualist and has specificity of idea in how the camera moves. Accomplishing those kinds of specific, omnipresent camera moves, where a camera never moves unless it has intent. Trying to design that on a location based series was challenging. But we pulled it off.”

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