By "The biggest goal for us was to find a way to honor the visual of that first film [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre]. The Grindhouse aesthetic but elevate it a little bit in line with our sensibility and modern sensibility. Cause that's a lot of what the film tackles. Right. Sort of old verses new."
Back in 1974, Bronx born, cinematographer Daniel Pearl, ASC made his feature length debut with ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘. In an interview for StudentFilmmakers Magazine in 2007 Daniel said, “I’ll talk about the look of that film, the moves that I designed, the operating of the camera, that’s all valid. The lighting of that film – I knew nothing about lighting at the time. I thought I did, but there’s so much to learn about lighting. I’m still learning today. I’ve been a DP for 34 years, and I’m still learning about lighting… Lighting is a tricky thing. No one ever thinks they know everything there is to know about it. And I could tell you this much, when I was 23, I didn’t know very much about it at all – I thought I did.” Daniel went on to have a very successful career making films, commercial and music videos. In the music industry he has calibrated with majority of the greats like Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Guns N’ Roses and even Latino stars, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin. In 2006 he even shot the remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘ starring Jessica Biel. As of this article Daniel has accumulated 299 title credits as a cinematographer.
The connection that Daniel has to the new Netflix ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘ is that he went to the same school, the University of Texas as cinematographer Ricardo Diaz and the director David Blue Garcia.
Cinematographer Ricardo Diaz is Los Angeles based but born and raised in Texas. He is known for his work on ‘First Girl I Loved‘ (2016) which won the Next Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, ‘Brian Banks‘ (2018) which won at the Los Angeles Film Festival for Best Fiction Film Audience Award, and recently the film ‘The Violent Heart‘ (2020) was accepted at the Tribeca Film Festival. He is also part of the team for the series ‘Stranger Things‘ for season 4 in which Ricardo shot a major scene.
Netflix gave Latin Horror the oppertunity to interview director David Blue Garcia, producer Fede Álvarez and Cinematographer Ricardo Diaz. Three Latinos that are reviving the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. With Ricardo, Latin Horror got to dive deep into the lighting and tones, horror films that he grew up with, and his bond with director David Blue Garcia. Check out Ricardo’s interview below as well as David and Fede.
WATCH THE VIDEO INTERVIEWS BELOW:
Ricardo Diaz, Cinematographer of ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’
Comments