The Haunting of Hill House was a Netflix original TV series that dropped in 2018 and quickly after being released it became one of Netflix’s most popular series. The haunting tale of 6 children trying to live with the lasting effects of growing up in Hill House and loosing their mother at such a young age is extraordinarily entertaining but the true winner of the whole series is specifically episode 6 titled “Two Storms” which jumped between the adult versions of the siblings at a funeral for their youngest sister while a storm raged on outside and back to them as young children in Hill House also battling a huge storm. You would think that the episode would be just as scary an haunting as the other episodes but this one stands out specifically because it was filmed to look like a one take.
The director, Mike Flanagan, later goes on to uncover the fact that the whole episode was actually 5 long takes strung together. Similarly to last weeks Nightmare from Set installment about the long takes of 1917, this TV series had to create a specially built set and work with their camera and art department to make everything run smoothly. The biggest differences through are that in this case the actors change through out the story but with no cutting and because the plot takes place at night inside you can’t rely on natural lighting. So they had to not only choreograph the actors and cameras but also the light and reflection boards.
Specific Set and Lighting Design:
In YouTube features posted by both Netflix and Insider, the director, Flanagan describes when they first starting building the set they had episode 6 in mind. Since the modern funeral home set needed to be connected to the main Hill House set. This is because multiple times through out the episode the Mr. Crain, the father, walks through the funeral home into Hill house as if he walking back in time into his memories. “The sets also had to include hiding places for the crew, equipment and special lighting rigs, along with secret passage ways for the actors and their photo doubles to sprint through as the scenes slip from past to present” (Insider).
As they rehearsed they also used sound and dialogue cues to tell the steady cam operator when to pivot or an actor when they need to hit a specific mark so that the people controlling the beauty lighting can make sure it hits them just right. “The production was shut down for a month so that they could focus on rehearsing the episode with second team stand-ins. They’d walk through the entire script over and over and over again so that the crew could learn all the blocking, lighting, and camera choreography” (Insider).
The biggest challenge was that the scenes had to be carried out perfectly. There could be no leeway for error because then the scene’s dialogue wouldn’t make sense, the actors wouldn’t be lit properly or someone could get seriously hurt, by a set piece flying in or out or a bounce card being swung over head to get to the next acting mark. There was even a make shift steady cam elevator that brought the camera from the first floor to the second as the actors ran down the massive stairwell.
In the beginning part of the episode the father is circling the room and watching his fully adult children revert back to their younger selves and then become fully grown again but the camera never stops. In an article for Den of Geek, Flanagan the director reveals who it was done. “This first segment involved hiding the younger actors playing the Crain children around the corner in the viewing room, so they could run in and replace their adult counterparts during a 360-degree move around Tim Hutton. The adults sprinted back into place a moment later.”
Real Rain Effects = Real Flooding:
Since both parallel plot lines are tied together by a massive storm that knocks the power out the crew brought in huge rain and lighting rigs to actually create real rain and the lighting effect. Through out the whole rain comes pouring through the fireplace and the windows get hammered with rain seeping and then at the most climatic part of the episode a hall of windows chatter and the rain and wind comes blasting in. The windows shattering was the only thing made with CGI everything else was practical. “They installed massive rain effects which actually flooded the set a few times during rehearsal” (Insider). Director fo Photography, Michael Fimognari, went on to explain, “We thought it was important that you could feel the water effects.” (Netflix).
Child Actors:
Often times you hear about the nightmare of trying to rangle young children on set and get them to act just as fantastically as their adult counter parts. Take this show which had extremely young actors handling very heavy material and now make them learn both their lines and everyone else’s lines in the script as well as memorize all this complicated blocking and then perform it like a live stage production that just keeps going instead of filming it in small takes like usual.
The children tackled the episode so well that TV Guide highlighted them as their actors of the week when the show was first released.
“Though each of the child actors has a standout moment in the season… we’d like to single out the younger set’s work in Episode 6. The hour is composed of several continuous shots, a format challenging to an actor of any age. And the script requires the kids to go from wariness about the sudden storm to an explosion of outright horror after having several ghostly encounters in the night, in the dark. Grace and Wilson gave off a quietly disturbed vibe as Theo and Shirley tried to process what they’d seen. Singleton made Steven a reassuring presence for his siblings. McGraw’s breathless panic when Nell was recovered was terrifying. And Hilliard’s earnest worry for Luke’s twin sister was note-perfect. In short: We care so much about the Crain children as adults because the actors playing their younger counterparts did their job — and were scary-good at it” (TV Guide).
The complexity and the nightmares of this episode caused a lot of head aches for the director, the camera operators and both the young and old cast, but the result is an entrancing episode that you can’t take your eye off of and it’s definitely the stand out episode of the season.
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