Director William Eubank: A Camera-Driven Approach

William Eubank, a director of thrilling features like Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin and the Kristen Stewart-led oceanic thriller Underwater, brings a unique perspective to film making. His approach is deeply rooted in his background as a cinematographer. Further setting him apart, Eubank's experience as a former Panavision prep tech has fostered a strong appreciation for the tools that support the craft of cinematography. This understanding helps shape his collaborative style, not just with the director of photography, but with all department heads, as he creates an integrated, image-driven approach to storytelling.

Eubank’s latest feature, Land of Bad, was shot in Australia with support from Panavision Queensland. Here, in his own words, he discusses the collaborative spirit, his partnership with the camera department, and how clearly defining the visual language during prep informs his directorial decisions.

During preproduction, I always try to work from the top down to define the visual style for a project. I’ve been fortunate to work across a few different genres, and I always begin with the camera language for each particular project. I like to start there because it defines a lot of how I’m going to create my blocking or eventually the actual edit. Is this a fast-cutting handheld film or a slow, dolly-driven precision piece? I always get together with my cinematographer and production designer — in the case of Land of Bad, Agustin Claramunt and Nathan Blanco Fouraux [respectively] — and we start looking at other films to really do a deep dive into this overall definition. Once that's sorted, it's much easier to start making choices on things like colour palettes and lighting styles.

I worked at Panavision for many years during and after college. It really was my film school. I was fortunate to be working there during the pivotal digital-transition years. The Star Wars prequel films were being shot on Sony F900s, Collateral was being shot on Sony F900s and Vipers, and Superman Returns was shot on the Genesis. I was playing around with early AJA cards and Blackmagic capture cards, making home-brewed SATA disk drives to capture and play full HD from my home computer connected to a digital deck — this was crazy back then! At Panavision at the time, we all knew things were changing. Cameras were now computers, which meant that like computers, you needed the newest and best every few years.

All this to say, what I saw whilst working at Panavision during these crazy years was that, at the end of the day, the lenses, the service, the expertise of Panavision was more important than ever. When you have all these big elements on the line, the service and expertise of Panavision is just unmatched, and I will be forever grateful for everything they’ve given me over the years.

The DP and I usually determine our lenses based on that initial shooting style we are going for. I love wide, close imaging with a shallow depth of field, but it’s not perfect for every project. On Underwater, we shot large format and used the Panavision Primo 70 lenses mixed with a few G Series anamorphics on Alexa Mini for shots that needed a smaller camera. For Land of Bad, we ended up using the Primo 70 lenses again. Since I knew we were doing so much crazy explosion and stunt work, I wanted to make sure we had enough lenses and backups for the workload.

Visual references are everything to me. It's easy to talk about things or go back and forth on an idea, but at the end of the day, the quicker you can point at a picture, a colour, a sequence, a piece of art, and say, 'That. We are doing that’ — then all the department heads are off to the races. The worst thing I think a director can be is wishy-washy for too long on something. Inevitably you run out of time, or the work gets done subpar. I’ll usually fill my office with tons and tons of pictures for every sequence. It makes for good impromptu creative talk whenever someone walks in during prep.

I always knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. It was either fly jets in the Navy or direct movies. I was terrible at math, and I needed to wear glasses, so flying jets was out. I grew up loving all kinds of movies and stories, and as a kid, I loved how film making brought so many creatives together. Every project is such a melting pot of ideas and creatives. I've now worked with so many different talented folks, it's just wild to think of how many man-hours go into each film. This has always felt to me like the medium where all forms of art collide. I have a couple of young kids now, and it will be fun to see how the medium changes over time. Until then, I hope to keep exploring different genres and telling all kinds of stories the best I know how!