Bone Lake is dark, sexy, and captivating. It follows two couples that are accidentally double-booked at a vacation rental home and decide to spend the weekend together. It doesn’t take long before manipulation, betrayal, and violence break out. With an incredible lead cast, this movie is one to keep an eye out for.
Nick Matthews is the cinematographer for Bone Lake, but this is not his first time working on a horror film. Not only did he collaborate with Bone Lake director, Mercedes Bryce Morgan, on Spoonful of Sugar, most notably, he was the director of photography for Saw X. Bone Lake premiered at Fantastic Fest 2024 and is actively seeking distribution.
Screen Rant interviewed Nick Matthews to discuss blending suspense and horror in Bone Lake. He reveals the challenges that he faced as well as the inspirations that helped form the look of the movie. Nick discussed how he now has a shorthand with Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan after working together several times. He also details what it was like working on Saw X, working with Tobin Bell, and seeing the traps in real life.
Nick Matthews Was Excited To Work With Mercedes Bryce Morgan Again
“The draw was getting a chance to evolve the stylistic choices and visual language that Mercedes and I had started to develop on Spoonful of Sugar.”
Screen Rant: What drew you to Bone Lake?
Nick Matthews: When I had worked with Mercedes on Spoonful of Sugar, it had been this fast-paced meet-each-other and immediately start a movie. But in the process of making that movie, I immediately resonated with her voice, and I resonated with her stylistic choices. She’s a really passionate, evolved filmmaker, and she has extremely collaborative instincts. So it was an amazing experience to work with her on that film.
We have done commercials and music videos since then and actually developed our friendship outside of the world of filmmaking in that time period. So when she hit me up, I was actually shooting Saw 10 at the time, and she was like, I have this movie. I was like, I’ve been away from home for four months, and I will be leaving my home less than a month after getting back, but I would do that for you because she’s just great to work with. So immediately, the draw was getting a chance to evolve the stylistic choices and visual language that Mercedes and I had started to develop on Spoonful of Sugar.
Screen Rant: Do you feel you have created a shorthand, having worked together before?
Nick Matthews: She has a prep process that I’m really familiar with. Also, we just know each other’s leanings. We know what makes each other laugh. We know, at this point, we can give each other a look, and we are both locked in, and we know what that means. Because we were shooting this film in Georgia, we ended up carpooling to set every day, so on the way in we could figure out what the day is, and on the way back, we would discuss what didn’t work, what did work, and just decompress.
That was actually really helpful, because this was made really quickly with a lot of moving pieces. And it’s got a lot happening. Her films have a lot of style. They’re very expressionistic. And so we needed to be on the same page in order to take those kinds of risks together.
Bone Lake Shot Principal Photography In Just Eighteen Days
“It’s a testament to the prep process that Mercedes and I have developed. I have to give her the credit for that.”
Screen Rant: How long did Bone Lake take to film?
Nick Matthews: Principal photography was 18 days so we were moving like lightning. We had three six-day weeks, because one of our talent needed to be wrapped by a certain date. So the movie had to hit those dates. We did a few pickups and some stuff that we mixed in in the studio, but in general, the majority of the filmmaking happened in this really quick span. And you’re rolling from days into nights, and it’s rainy, and it’s cold. It’s all those things.
It’s a testament to the prep process that Mercedes and I have developed. I have to give her the credit for that. Essentially, we develop a large Google document that has gifs and has everything built out. Then as we go through and prep with the location, we’ll use an app called Artemis, which is kind of a viewfinder app. We’ll shoot almost all the images, at least the complex images, that are part of that. And we’ll bake them into this document.
Then, once we get the schedule, we break it out day by day, we make sure no day is over 20 to 25 setups. We’re always shooting two cameras, and sometimes three. So we use that as a way to both capture the coverage that’s needed for the edit in order to refine the performances and also to refine what the storytelling is. Sometimes you cut a scene and then you show it to an audience, and you realize they’re not connecting with the character we want them to connect with, so we use another bit of coverage and display it a little bit differently. So it’s a mixture of those things.
Why Mercedes Bryce Morgan Was The Right Choice For Bone Lake
“This is a film that, in another filmmaker’s hands, this film could actually go a completely different direction, and take a totally different tone.”
Screen Rant: Without spoilers, what was your reaction when you first read the script?
Nick Matthews: I was so excited to do something that had this level of eroticism. I’ve had films that I’ve done before where we explore eroticism, and we explore sensuality, but I also did love the duality of the characters. I did love that the film takes you on a journey. But for me, I want to go to the movies to be surprised and to be shocked. I want to have my heart beating in my chest, gasping for air wondering what’s the next thing that’s going to happen. I love that propulsive storytelling.
I knew this is a film that, in another filmmaker’s hands, this film could actually go a completely different direction, and take a totally different tone. But I knew in Mercedes hands, this is going to deliver all sorts of surprising expressions in new ways of watching a film. So I was just excited. Like, this is the next thing we get to do together? I’m in.
Nick Matthews Pulled Inspiration From Both Films & Photographs For Bone Lake
“As the movie gets more unhinged, the camera work and the lighting become a little more unhinged and a little more manic.”
Screen Rant: Are there any films that you pulled inspiration from when shooting Bone Lake?
Nick Matthews: It’s interesting because I usually watch a lot of films before I make a movie. In this case, I think because of our prep process, we had three and a half weeks from landing in Georgia until we started rolling cameras, so I feel like we were leaning on a lot of things that we had already discussed. A lot of things that we had already had in our conversations.
But that said, we reference A Clockwork Orange a lot, we referenced Evil Dead 2, Funny Games. Specifically, we were looking at those movies in ways of how they move the camera. We were looking at photographers like Gregory Crewdson in terms of the moves from a grounded naturalism into a heightened surrealism. We were looking at the ways that Gregory Crewdson and some of these other photographers like Todd Hido, and there’s a French photographer’s name is escaping me right now, where it’s like the ways in which they use lighting, and the ways in which the lighting evolves and the color choices evolve.
Evil Dead 2, we were looking at the maniacal camera movement of that, like the camera always moves, it’s perpetual in that film. A Clockwork Orange uses zooms, it uses wide angle lenses, it places you right into the character’s faces. And so we wanted to use a mixture of those styles, and as the movie gets more unhinged, the camera work and the lighting become a little more unhinged and a little more manic.
This Is Nick Matthews’ First Union Film, Meaning It Was The First Time He Was Unable To Operate The Camera Himself
“It’s being able to communicate with a team and being able to do this in rapid succession in order to deliver something.”
Screen Rant: What was the biggest challenge for you on Bone Lake?
Nick Matthews: I would say the six-day weeks, the turnover times were honestly the most challenging, but that’s not a very exciting answer. I think from a visual perspective, the most challenging thing was lighting these massive night exteriors and interiors. I had a really great team. I had a gaffer named Taylor Schultz, and she crewed her team up with a lot of female electrics, which I loved. And it felt like it brought a diversity to a set that I’m not used to because you don’t tend to find a lot of electric teams that are mostly female-led. I had a great key grip on this movie as well.
We did a lot of crazy grip rigs with how we mounted the camera, where we place the camera. But for me, I think some of the challenges were like when we have 20 minutes left to our day, and we have to do some of these massive night interiors where the camera is moving through the house, and we’re just having to blaze through those at the same time we were trying to capture this. The movie moves from monochrome tones into duotones and then into this tritone thing where we’re using lampshades, and we’re using colored curtains as a way to color the light.
It’s being able to communicate with a team and being able to do this in rapid succession in order to deliver something. And this, for me, was my first Union film. It’s the first time I wasn’t able to operate on a movie, so a lot of my trust was placed in my A-cam operator, Dalton Price. I’d done a few other movies with him. He’s an amazing steadicam operator, but this was my first time doing a movie where he operated everything. I think the only shot in the movie that I operated, aside from some of the pickups, was the title card shot.
One day Mercedes and I were wrapped, and we were about to leave, and I was like, do you mind if we get this shot of the lake? The reflection is so gorgeous. And so we did this slow pan across the lake, and now it’s the title card.
Screen Rant: Was it difficult to take a step back?
Nick Matthews: Yeah. I’m used to leading from behind a camera and operating, but when you’re doing two to three cameras, and you’re managing a team that’s 10 or 12 or 15 people, it is helpful to be able to have the distance. There’s things I learned from it and there’s things that I would shift, but in general, I think we did what we set out to do with not too much commotion.
On Saw X, The Team Mostly Looked To The First Two Films For Inspiration
“I wanted to find a way to take the visual language of those movies, revisit it, but also give it our own twist, elevate it.”
Screen Rant: What was it like working on Saw X?
Nick Matthews: I was so nervous at first because I grew up in a very religious home where I had to fight for every movie that I watched. I remember I saw The Elephant Man and that sparked me to make movies. Saw was one of those early films in high school for me that I was like, I have to see this stuff. I don’t care, I have to see this. So I watched it, and loved it, and so getting the chance to actually interview for, and then being booked on, a Saw film, I was really nervous.
But Kevin, the director, made me feel incredibly welcome. I never had a moment where I felt like I didn’t have somebody by my side. Kevin was extremely collaborative as a director as well. He really values that. He had chatted with Mercedes before he hired me, and a few other directors I’d worked with, and asked if I was collaborative. On Saw 10, we were looking at Saw 1 and 2 explicitly, but then some of the other Saw films. I wanted to find a way to take the visual language of those movies, revisit it, but also give it our own twist, elevate it.
A lot of what we did was take the expressive camera movement of the first film, and the color palettes of the first and second film, and then blend them in this three-dimensional color space where we were playing with these ochre yellows and these arsenical greens, and we are baking that into the language of the movie.
It was fun, obviously, to work with Tobin Bell. It was such a gift. He’s just a kind person who cares deeply about the craft. He shows up early to set with lots of questions. He is still dancing at his age. He is someone who really inspired me, and we created a lot of trust between us. Shooting in Mexico was a really rewarding experience. I’m really proud of the film and I was really honored to be a part of this really brutal, stylistic piece of culture.
The Saw Traps Aren’t Quite As Scary In Real Life
“On set, the experience is actually less terrifying than the experience of watching through a monitor because on set I’m seeing all the gimmickry”
Screen Rant: What is it like seeing the Saw traps in real life?
Nick Matthews: The most impressive thing was we worked with this company called Fractured FX. They did Westworld and Eyes of Tammy Faye, and they’ve done a ton of other stuff like one of my favorite shows, The Knick. They did all the prosthetics work in that. We landed them for Saw X. When you work with a prosthetics team that’s Academy nominated, you can see why, because the prep process involves all the cast making, all the molds and everything.
When you get on set, and you see the pieces, you’re like these do look like the actor. I’m sitting here looking at both, you know? The Valentina trap where her leg gets sawed off. I would say on set the experience is actually less terrifying than the experience of watching through a monitor, because on set I’m seeing all the gimmickry. I know where the people are hiding. I know how that’s being manipulated. But the art of the prosthetics themselves is so detailed. And that’s kind of the beauty of it.
We always knew our blood needs to be dark. It’s not bright red. It’s dark. I kind of always talk about Saw as like, it’s something that you want to feel like you need a tetanus shot after. It’s rusty, it’s grimy, it’s dirty, it’s drippy, you know? And so to be able to actually witness those coming, unfolding, really you’re just in the moment experiencing it. I only got a little skeeved out when I was on monitor actually directing some of the operators.
On the brain surgery trap, I was shooting all the flash frames while we were shooting the other pieces so there was a lot of synergy to that movie. There was a lot of trust in Kevin and Kevin had a lot of trust in me. I loved making that film and I do expect that I’ll probably do more in that world, if given the opportunity.
More About Bone Lake (2024)
When two young couples are mistakenly double-booked into the same vacation rental their romantic weekend becomes a twisted maze of sex, lies, and survival.
Check back soon for our other Bone Lake interviews here:
- Mercedes Bryce Morgan, Andra Nechita, Marco Pigossi
Bone Lake
premiered at Fantastic Fest 2024 and is actively seeking distribution.
