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“The Caged” DOP Simon Rowling: “Having the Misfit Kick was Brilliant”
Based on a true story, The Caged is a period-piece that follows a young family as they discover that their new home is haunted by its dark history. With ghosts, grime and goats; the feature has just wrapped production.
We caught up with Simon Rowling, DOP of the historical horror feature, who made use of our Misfit Kick Mk II matte box to help create the film’s distinctive visuals.
The Caged is a horror film set in the 1980s, about a family who have moved into a haunted house. The basement beneath the house was previously known as “The Cage” and was used to hold women accused of witchcraft before being hanged during the witch trials of 16th-century England.
Usually when reading a script I take note of the emotional tones and beats of the story. The Caged has its classic horror moments and jump-scares, but it was the characterisation, family dynamic and creepy undertone that I felt would give me a lot to play with in the cinematography.
Starting in the props department, Rowling found himself naturally drawn to cinematography and shifted gears towards camerawork. Today, his CV boasts a lengthy list of credits: from commercials with the world’s biggest brands to feature films with the world’s biggest stars. But at the heart of every shoot is collaboration.
I think you have to be collaborative as a filmmaker: you can have ideas, but you have to listen to others and take onboard their opinions. As a DOP, the Director’s word is final. They have their vision, you have yours, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t suggest ideas. On the contrary, I believe our job is to advise, suggest ideas and to find workarounds or solutions that get scenes completed in the specified time.
That’s part of what our job entails – the same goes for other members of our teams, such as the Grip or Gaffer. You take on board what they suggest and bow to their greater knowledge.
When it came to creating the look for The Caged, Rowling worked alongside Director Jeffrey Scott Collins to create a distinctly uneasy atmosphere – deliberately disjointed down to the choice of lens.
I wanted a slight vintage look to the film as it was set in 1988 – so as well as having costume, hair and makeup and dressing of that time period; I wanted to give it a distorted vibe, as though something was never quite right. References for myself and the Director included a mixture of films, but those of particular relevance were The Conjuring (Wan, 2013) and Hereditary (Aster, 2018) in terms of story, the look, camera movement and colour.
Shooting on the RED V-RAPTOR, The Caged’s script challenged Rowling to make the jump between time periods visually distinct whilst also being consistent with the rest of the feature.
I decided to use modern lenses (ARRI Enso Primes) for full control and matching in post, but with the Rear Negative Element (100N). This added blur on the edge of frame: more prevalent on the wider lenses, and not visible on the longer ones. I used a stronger back filter (350N) for the flashbacks to the 16th century and framing for a 4:3 aspect ratio. I also had a LUT made to give the right colour and contrast in-camera and for dailies.
But with a lot of setups in a limited time, the shooting schedule for The Caged was often a noose around the team’s neck. This meant that Rowling and the camera team had to be one step ahead creatively.
Our shoot was on quite a tight schedule of only twenty days, and with a hundred pages to shoot and a family of four in a lot of scenes, it was a tough ask.
Originally we had shot listed lots of shots per scene that we wanted to capture, but we soon realised that we had to reduce our coverage and come up with unique and interesting angles to cover scenes and almost ignore the idea of getting traditional “coverage”. Which, looking back, I think made us more creative and made us stick to our vision more strongly than we might have done otherwise.
The most rewarding shots were probably the odd angle perspective shots – such as putting the camera in a box which the family are unpacking, or in a hole that they peer through. These were shots we thought of in prep, and then when executed, they looked fantastic.
In order to keep downtime minimal on set, Rowling and the camera team used the Misfit Kick Mk II matte box, with the lightweight three-stage matte box design being perfect for The Caged’s toughest – and bloodiest – shots.
I used a subtle filter throughout the film, a Black Satin 1, to take the edge off the image: lowering contrast, sharpness and adding a small amount of blooming.
Having the Misfit Kick was brilliant as we were able to have an ND in one tray and the Black Satin in another, and then when I needed I could simply expand the trays to three slots so we could have a third filter to use a Rota Pola on car work, or add in a clear filter for blood splatters!
The lightweight matte box was great – we used it mainly in clamp-on mode, with flags or mattes to stop any flaring and to control contrast. We also used a Misfit Atom for the B-Camera and Second Unit days.
With The Caged blending supernatural scares with Britain’s historical horrors, we’re excited to see the final results – terrifying as they may sound.
The Caged is currently in post-production with an expected release date in 2026.
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