Cinematography Style: Dan Laustsen

This video is sponsored by Squarespace, the best way to create your website. Dan Laust's cinematography feels less like a collection of images and more like an atmosphere you step into. His work blends precision with a kind of dream-like intensity using bold expressive color palettes, rich greens, steel blue, deep ambers and vivid contrasts that carve shape and emotion into every frame. Paired with his preference for wider focal length lenses, which pull the viewer deeper into the environment, his images gain a sweeping immersive quality. In this video we're going to break down the visual language Lauston returns to and explore the technical film gear that he uses to do so. Dan Lauston's path into filmmaking began in the 70s when he trained at the National Film School of Denmark and quickly found his footing shooting early projects with directors like Soren Krak-Jakobsen. These films helped shape his instinct for strong visual storytelling through images that were expressive, stylized and driven by atmosphere rather than strict realism. As his career expanded beyond Denmark he became known for collaborating with international directors who embraced bold imaginative worlds, most notably Guillermo del Toro and Chad Stahelski. Across these partnerships Lauston often gravitated towards elevated genre filmmaking like action, fantasy, sci-fi or horror where heightened visuals were expected. It's in these spaces that his signature style thrives. Rich colour, dramatic contrast and a painterly sensibility that transforms fantastical stories into something operatic. Perhaps the element in his work which most strongly stands out is his expressive use of colour palettes. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his collaborations with Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo and me, you know, we are very agree about the way we like to make movies. We like the strong colours. We really love, as everybody can see, we love steel blue. We love that colour so much and we think it's so good with the contrast between the amber and the red. This preference isn't arbitrary. It's grounded in one of the most fundamental principles of colour theory. Complementary colours. On the colour wheel blue and orange sit directly opposite each other, meaning they create the strongest natural contrast when placed together in the same frame. This contrast isn't just visually striking, it helps guide the viewer's eye, define depth and create an emotional tone that feels both heightened, fantastical and harmonious. Lauston uses this steel blue and amber palette often in his work, through a very deliberate approach to lighting. He often washes the majority of the environment in a cool steel blue ambience, establishing a moody base layer that shapes the world and its atmosphere. Then cutting through that coolness he introduces warm accents, such as pockets of amber or red from practicals like candles, lanterns or lamps. These warmer sources illuminate key details, separate subjects from their surroundings and bring a sense of visual rhythm, so that the colour in the frame doesn't feel too monochromatic. The push and pull between the dominant blue and the strategically placed warm highlights creates a pleasing colour separation, making the image feel both dimensional and emotionally charged. Although Lauston sees himself as a technician who is there to support the director, there are often some stylistic similarities to the films he shoots, which extend beyond the lighting palette. For many films that he works on, the camera takes on an almost third person omniscient perspective, which represents the filmmaker guiding the audience's eye around the space. He does this by using a wider field of view, which sees more of the set, rather than shooting everything in tight close ups with a shallow depth of field. This wider frame then often glides around the set, floating through the space, or following subjects like a wandering, observing, all-knowing eye. I think that is the goal or the key, to shoot it wide and beautiful, as wide as we can. Whether capturing fluid moving action sequences like in the John Wick films, or slowly tracking the walk of characters in the various del Toro movies, he likes the camera to have lots of width and to be dynamic. Before we get into how he does this and the technical gear that he uses, I'd like to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this video. If you want to work in the film industry as a freelancer, like Dan Lauston, then you need a to display your work, and offer contact points for potential clients or collaborators. Squarespace gives you all the tools to do this, from their video pages to their galleries, which allow you to upload examples of your work. Squarespace's smart design tools and elegant templates make it effortless to create a site that feels both professional and personalized to your online aesthetic. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch your site, go to squarespace.com slash indepthcine to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. When it comes to gear, Lauston consistently chooses tools that support his expressive, stylized approach to cinematography. His lighting setups rarely aim for strict naturalism, instead they embrace a heightened, almost theatrical quality. A signature example of this is his use of strong, warm single source lighting. While these lights might be motivated by elements of real life, like a window catching late day sun, their intensity, hardness and direction often go far beyond what real sunlight would produce. He frequently relies on large tungsten units like T24 or T12 Fresnel spotlights, or multi-bank fixtures like Dino lights. These have a warm color balance, which becomes even warmer when he places quarter CTS gels in front of them, and can be used to punch hard sculptural beams into a room, or even to add shape light outside into a strong beam such as simulating the sun rising. The light will usually follow a single source approach, lighting actors from only one side, and not using a counter fill light on the other side, so that the contrast remains high and the shadows are crisp and black. He usually avoids placing film lights inside interiors, preferring to light through windows and with practicals, as it frees up the actors and the camera to move anywhere within the space they'd like, without needing to avoid capturing gear in the shot. To create the warm cool palettes in interiors or for night scenes that we mentioned before, he'll usually use LED sources, like Cream Source Vortex 8's or SkyPanel S60 or S360's, as they are easier to control and dim. These lights will either get programmed with a specific RGB steel blue color value, or he'll do it the old school way with gels. For this method he'll dial the lights into a 3200 Kelvin temperature. A Li-117 steel blue gel will then be added to the front of them. He'll then set the white balance of his camera to 3200 Kelvin, which will give scenes this pale green tinted wash. Next he'll fill in the warmer accents, either with 2800 Kelvin light, or with other warm practical sources. A method he loves to follow is to always pre-light spaces. In other words, he'll explain the lighting setup to his gaffer, or provide lighting diagrams. These will then be set up before the main technical unit and the director arrives on set to shoot. Laustsen also shapes his images in camera through filtration. He often uses a quarter promis diffusion filter placed behind the lens, rather than the common method of mounting the filter to the front of the lens with a matte box. This helps to avoid ghosting or filter reflections being captured, while still blooming highlights just enough to soften the digital edge. This diffusion helps maintain that painterly quality without sacrificing clarity. Lens choice plays a central role too. Laustsen gravitates towards wide angle lenses, usually around a 24, 25 or 27mm focal length, which allows him to see more of the environment when framing characters, and maintain that wide immersive look. He's fond of sharp lenses like the Spherical Large Format Lights Tahlia Primes, or the Super 35 Zeiss Master Primes, or crisper anamorphics like the Arri Alphas or Master Anamorphics. Although he of course shot his earlier work on film, in recent years he's enjoyed working with various Arri digital cinema cameras. Pairing these wider lenses with large format cameras like the Alexa 65 or Alexa LF gives him a grander field of view, while still preserving shallow depth of field when needed. It's a combination that expands the set and exposes the audience to more of the location. If the camera is not floating around on a steadicam, it's usually moving in another way, such as on a Scorpio or Techno 30 telescoping crane. His team can set down the base of this techno crane, and then use the extendable arm to move the camera anywhere within the space, jibbing up or down, swinging it side to side, or wirelessly panning the stabilised remote head left or right. This along with other tools like a dolly, or even a spider cam, allow him to execute that smooth gliding movement that feels almost omniscient. Whether following high paced action or drifting through intricate sets, the camera often becomes a floating observer that is precise, controlled and dynamic. Together, this use of stylised lighting, bold colour, wide lenses, large format sensors, diffusion and dynamic camera movement form the technical backbone of Laustsen's unmistakable visual style, and help him to bring the director's fantastical, thrilling or frightful stories to life. Dan Laustsen's cinematography stands as a reminder that images don't always need to realistically or naturalistically tell stories. They can also be expressive, intentional and emotionally charged. Whether he's illuminating a fantastical world, shaping tension in a horror sequence, or guiding the audience through intricate action, his work shows how technical choices can assist directors to elevate storytelling far beyond the literal. And for cinematographers, his approach offers a valuable lesson. Embrace the tools, understand the craft and don't be afraid to let the image become a world of its own. That brings us to the end of this video. Thank you to all of you for supporting the channel, especially those loyal supporters on Patreon. Otherwise, until next time, thanks for watching and goodbye.