"The Love Witch" is a visually stunning film that takes viewers on a journey into the dark and seductive world of witchcraft and love spells. Directed by Anna Biller, this 2016 film is a homage to the Technicolor melodramas of the 1960s. Behind the scenes of "The Love Witch," there is a meticulous attention to detail that brings the film's retro aesthetic to life. The costumes, set designs, and cinematography all contribute to creating a dreamlike atmosphere that transports viewers back in time. The film's love witch herself, Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson, is a captivating and enigmatic character. She uses her beauty and powers of seduction to ensnare men, but soon finds that her spells have unintended consequences.

The love witch behind the scenes

The Magic of Hard Lighting for The Love Witch

The creative and technical choices and decisions that resulted in the unique look of this indie horror feature.

American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer

Anna Biller — writer-director of The Love Witch — also oversaw the film's costume and production design and edited the picture, relying on M. David Mullen, ASC to artful bring her vision to the screen with classic techniques.

The Love Witch follows the romantic misadventures of Elaine (Samantha Robinson), who uses witchcraft in her pursuit of men, sometimes with fatal results. It could be described as a drama with thriller and horror elements. Thought set in modern times in a small town in northern California, the style is thoroughly old-fashioned, using visual aesthetics from the classic studio era of Hollywood. [Editor's note: The somewhat NSFW trailer can be found here.]

M. David Mullen, ASC composes a shot.

I first met director Anna Biller when we were students at CalArts in the early 1990s. We shared a love of old 3-strip Technicolor movies and I shot a 16mm short film for her in that style. Biller is truly someone I would call a “total” filmmaker, not only writing and directing, but designing, building, and painting her sets, constructing props, sewing costumes, plus editing and scoring the movie.

She asked me to shoot her latest feature in a retro style reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s color movies, in particular The Birds and Marnie (both photographed by Robert Burks, ASC), which are also tales that center around a glamorous but troubled woman arriving in a new town. Other references were British horror films like Horror Hotel and Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and some 1960s Elizabeth Taylor melodramas. Though soft lighting had crept into movies around that period — even Marnie has some semi-soft lighting at times — we stuck to more of a hard-lit 1950s approach. Color and glamour are Biller’s particular visual obsessions and the hard key light approach emphasizes both.

Mullen frames up as actress Samantha Robinson prepares to concoct a potion.

Biller has always been an advocate for shooting and finishing on film, even when we were back at CalArts and many students used video for convenience and cost reasons. She insisted on using 35mm for this project and wanted to finish photochemically. This meant shooting in standard 4-perf 35mm so that we could make a contact print for release. We composed for 1.85:1 using an Arricam ST from Otto Nemenz Cameras.

Today, one’s choice in color negative stock is limited to the four types made by Kodak, and the single Vision 2383 print stock. Even though standard 35mm Eastmancolor movies of the 1950s have a somewhat coarse grain structure, Biller told me that she wasn’t interested in replicating any sort of grainy look, so in my mind, we were aiming for the smoother look of past 3-strip Technicolor or VistaVision movies. I decided to shoot most of the production on Kodak Vision-3 5213 / 200T stock, but rated at 100 ASA in order to get very high printer light values, which in turn would give the print a rich look with deeper blacks and stronger color saturation. A few scenes had to be shot on Kodak Vision-3 5207 / 250D stock for practical reasons, but it matched the look of 200T fairly well. If Vision Premier 2393 print stock still existed, I probably could have overexposed the stock less heavily and still have gotten that Technicolor look we wanted.

Mullen and his team prepare to set a shot on Robinson.

We talked about whether to use optics from the 1960s such as Baltars or Panchros, but it was important to Biller that the colors she used for the sets and costumes were captured as accurately as possible with maximum saturation, and some of those older lenses have a color bias to them or a loss of contrast. Also, because I planned on using diffusion filters to recreate the glamorous close-ups of the era, I didn’t want to start out with lenses that were too soft. In the end we used Zeiss Super Speeds with a few Standard Speeds mixed in. I also used a 24-290mm Angenieux Optimo occasionally, mainly for a few shots where I had to zoom into an extreme close-up. I felt that the modern Optimo actually matched the look of the Super Speeds better than an older zoom would, plus most of those zooms are an f/4 wide-open, whereas the Optimo is an f/2.8. Since I was rating the film at 100 ASA, I needed a 100 footcandles just to get an f/2.8, which became the base stop for most of my interiors. Bumping everything up to 200 footcandles just to be able to use an f/4 zoom now and then would have been frustrating and time-consuming, though cinematographers of the past had to deal with this all the time.

Mullen adjusts his exposure while capturing a closeup on Robinson.

We spent the first two weeks on stage and then went on location after that. The sets were all lit with classic tungsten Fresnel lamps, often a direct 2K Junior as a key in wide shots; a 1K or 650w Tweenie was bright enough for the closer coverage. On the second day, I tried using a 2K Zip as a key, which looked quite good – and was keeping with 60’s era techniques — but I dropped that approach by the end of the day as not being hard and crisp enough. The only area in which I “cheated” regarding the hard light style was in the use of fill, since that’s a light that’s not supposed to be seen, only felt. Even an older movie would have used something like spun glass on a large scoop light for a softer fill, so I didn’t feel it was inappropriate to bounce lights off of white board, or occasionally use a 1x1 LED LitePanel next to the lens.

One thing that concerned me once we left the stage was the location shooting because I had some daytime locations where I could not gel the windows to 3200°K. I dislike using HMI PARs as hard key lights unless they are very far away, like outside a window. Up close, they produce an odd shadow pattern that can only be improved by softening the light. The daylight-balanced solution was to use the new Mole-Richardson LED Fresnels, which allowed me to keep the classic hard key light look that only a Fresnel lens can give you. They also have a number of modern advantages, pulling less power and putting out less heat than tungsten lighting does.

Mullen and his crew plot out a dolly move while filming a surreal scene.

Anna Biller had done a number of color illustrations of her set designs, and one idea I had was to reinforce the colors by using colored lighting in the background, sometimes splashing pink light onto pink tablecloths, blue light onto blue curtains, etc. In keeping with classic aesthetics, I avoided colored light on the faces whenever possible.

There were some drug-induced visions in the story that we created in-camera — for example, I used a kaleidoscope lens for one shot, and for a number of others, a plastic diffraction filter that created rainbow streaks around practical light sources in frame. I also created a red vignette by cutting out an oval in a red party gel that was then taped to the matte box.

A mesmerizing image of Elaine achieved with a simple kaleidoscope lens and gels.

The combination of Zeiss Super Speeds, hard lighting, and 200T stock created quite a sharp image that needed some diffusion to achieve the romantic close-ups we desired. I had some nets stretched onto filter frames; the lightest effect was from a black tulle material I found in a fabric store. I also had some Dior and Fogal nets as well, but they were only used on very tight close-ups, plus a few fantasy moments and flashbacks. I sometimes combined the light black tulle with a Schneider Classic Soft filter. For a separate story arc involving a police investigation, I mostly just used a mild Tiffen Soft-FX filter to take the edge off so the sharpness didn’t jump out compared to the romantic look of Elaine’s scenes.

We shot for a couple of days in Eureka, California, to establish our small-town setting, along with gathering footage to be rear-projected on stage when we got back for some process driving shots. The plates were just shot with a little Sony NEX6 camera. On stage, the files were fed from a laptop into a 15K lumens LCD projector. The rear-projection screen was 12’x6’ and I ended up with enough exposure to shoot at f/2.0 using 250D stock (chosen because of the color temperature of the projector lamp.) I didn’t feel that it was important to shoot the plates on 35mm film since the image on the screen would not be in sharp focus behind the actress in the car.

Shooting on stage, Mullen angles over Robinson's shoulder.

During the answer printing, Biller was a stickler about getting the color right and though she has done this before, I think it was hard for her to be limited to simple RGB printer light corrections — sometimes we and the timer talked about whether a single point correction was going to be too much or not enough to get the color just right.

I think the main thing I re-discovered in post was how much contrast there is — how dense the blacks are — when you print a movie from the original negative at high printer lights. The look is much richer than what most digital projection can achieve today. We did find that in the photochemical prints, maybe the greens weren't as saturated as with the digital version, and the deeper blacks came at the expense of some loss of shadow detail, but, in general, I think the 35mm print that is currently playing in festivals is closer to the Technicolor feeling that the movie wanted to express than the DCP will be.

Mullen further discusses his work on the film in this AC Podcast episode.

Elaine appears in a seductive fantasy sequence.

Interview: Anna Biller on Casting a Spell with “The Love Witch”

When talking to Anna Biller, it becomes clear that the depth of the writer/director’s knowledge of Hollywood history has become part of what has enabled her to transcend it.

“Fred Astaire would rehearse until his feet would bleed and his dancing would look so light and effortless,” Biller tells me, shortly after I expressed shock at hearing what went into making her second feature “The Love Witch” such a frothy confection.‎ “When they shot ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ the suffering that people went through in that makeup…all these things on film that look so effortless and so beautiful, it’s because people put blood, sweat and work in. You see a ballerina’s shoes after a performance and they’re full of blood and [and during the performance it] looks like she’s floating on the air. That’s the ugly reality behind art.”

You wouldn’t know that tension exists from a mere glance at “The Love Witch,” the slick surface of which reflects the fantastical visions of its occult-minded protagonist Elaine (Samantha Robinson). Yet over the course of almost a decade that Biller spent plotting a follow-up to her first feature “Viva,” in which she used the time waiting for a cinematographer (M. David Mullen) who still knew the hard lighting style of the 1960s in which the film is set to learn left-handed calligraphy just to make sure Elaine’s spell book looked just right and composing the Renaissance-era music for the film’s finale, she added layer upon layer to the story of a young woman with occult-enhanced abilities to get what she thinks she wants from men, only to discover they can’t possibly fulfill what she’s really after. In literal terms, that meant using vivid colors in the sets her personally painted and the costumes she stitched together by hand, intended to emanate directly from the intensity of Elaine’s inner life. But Biller’s extraordinary (and largely individual) effort behind so many aspects of “The Love Witch” also works its way into the subconscious, with each carefully constructed frame illuminated by how intentionally artificial it all is, making it easy to see how Elaine can get lost in her imagination since the film itself is so hypnotic.

It was frustrating that I spent so long admiring what Biller was able to achieve in the presentation of “The Love Witch” that I was unable to ask her more about the boldness of the film’s ideas, slyly inserting itself stylistically into a tradition of free love-era films with a wicked sense of humor to skewer their predominantly male gaze. However, it was simply a pleasure to spend any time with her at all, talking about the challenges of a true do-it-yourself production as well as how what’s old becomes new again and inadvertently casting practitioners of witchcraft in the film.

Knowing what an undertaking this is for you personally, what was strong enough about the idea that it kept you excited about it over the years?

I’ve been working in film for a while and I want to make movies from the female consciousness, so when I come up with a scenario – like I wanted to make this witch movie – it starts growing in terms of its elaborateness in terms of really wanting to make a world that’s cinematic. There are my ideas about characters and psychology and then there are my ideas about what cinema is and whatever idea I did, it was probably going to be equally cinematic because I have my cinema fantasies. So it wasn’t elaborate because of this idea. It was elaborate because this is how I make movies. [laughs]

Is part of your interest in filmmaking the fact it enables you to pursue a bunch of different crafts – the left-handed handwriting, the composition of renaissance music…

Yeah, I’m a visual artist and the truth is I love to be in my studio, making stuff. I love to be learning calligraphy or sewing or painting and I love to write songs. The drag for me is actually being on the set. That’s the really stressful part where you have all this stuff that can come crashing down and you know there’s so much money at stake and so many people who can ruin things. The zen thing for me, and the reason I work so long on things, is to make stuff because I’m trying to prevent that chaos that happens on the set. There was so much chaos on the set for my last film [“Viva”] and I wanted to make sure that everything was going to work really smoothly. The more time you spend on preproduction, the more smooth your shoot is, but then it just took me a lot longer than I thought. There was still some chaos because I didn’t finish everything, like the props that I didn’t finish or the things that hadn’t been worked out.‎

I remember you saying you waited years to get this cinematographer, M. David Mullen.

Because I knew I’m not going to get my film otherwise. I have enough experience in shooting to know if you don’t get the right DP, you might as well throw your film in the garbage can. Seriously, that’s the most important person on your set. I’ve interviewed so many kinds of DPs and the fact is there’s just a certain type of knowledge and skill that’s gone from the world almost at this point about classic lighting technique. Everybody says that they know it, “Oh yeah, I know how to light. I can light anything.” But when you talk to them, all you need to do is ask two or three key questions to find out that they don’t. It’s interesting how much that art has fallen off. There’s almost nobody left that knows how to do it and this is just something I learned the hard way through shooting and I’ve learned what I like in lighting and what I don’t like, so it’s very important to me to find the DP that can give me the lighting that I like because I’ve done this lighting on every film I’ve ever done.

I also really knew the importance of having a DP who could work really quickly because on “Viva,” we went over time too much. Even though our DP was very, very good, he didn’t have as much experience, and working with a much more experienced DP who learns how to move really fast, more experience leads to more speed and we had to move really quickly on this because we have these SAG actors and they’re expensive. We couldn’t really afford to go over time the way we did before.

Still, with how much time and care you put into things, I was surprised to hear you only shoot one take typically.

One or two. At first, my DP was saying let’s do a safety take, but after a while, I thought we’re burning too much film. If the take was good, we don’t do a safety take. Because film is very expensive and that’s how you burn money. And [during the take] we’re not just shooting for a wide [shot]. We’re doing this classical style where we’re doing wide and over the shoulder and a closeup – we do different coverage, so if you’re doing that and you’re shooting a bunch of takes, oh my God.

Is there actually a relief in thinking we’ve only got one shot at this?

No…that’s why you have to be really prepared. You have to get actors who know what they’re doing, who are really confident in front of the camera and who are going to ace it and then you get a great DP, who knows how to light it and you storyboard it and you walk through it, so you know it looks good. The only time you get into a disaster is if you get on set and you don’t know what you’re doing. I want to make sure I can cut it together and I won’t know that unless I do storyboards, so that’s why I also spend a few months doing storyboards. And that can change on the set – you can come up with something better – but at least you have a plan going in.

It sounds like a fairly isolated process…

It’s a very isolated process for years. [laughs] And then it’s eight weeks of shooting and you’re done. Then it’s isolated again in editing – I spend very little time with people.‎

Is it an exciting moment where you’re giving it over to a group of collaborators?

It’s exciting because of what the actors are bringing, and it’s magical, but you have to realize you’re shooting at least 12 hours and then going home to work three or four more to prepare for the next day. I was working seven days a week and my health wasn’t great, so “exciting”? It’s adrenaline, but you don’t have the energy to have anything like emotional excitement. At certain moments, when you see the actors doing something absolutely breathtaking or an incredible shot, you can feel the exhilaration, but the exhaustion is so great. I didn’t get enough help with my sets in preproduction, and I wasn’t able to find the right people, so by the time we got on the set, I was so incredibly exhausted from having to do the work of 10 people just getting the sets together.

Did you actually see this as a bookend to “Viva”? In that film, it was an innocent who is discovering her power during the sexual revolution and here, Elaine would seem to be in thrall to hers.

They’re similar in the sense that they’re both looking for love and the character in “Viva” thinks she’s going to find love in sexual fulfillment and it turns out she’s wrong about that. [laughs] But it’s a way to explore the excesses of the sexual revolution through her journey. Elaine is looking for love as well — true love — and she finds out in a patriarchal culture, no matter how much sex she throws at people, she can’t really get it because men don’t want sex, they want power. It’s not really about love. This is why she can’t win against the police officer. But it’s also a way of showing how in being a woman and trying to tie yourself in knots to please everyone can actually drive you insane because I feel those problems for her character are created by the things that she’s learned being female.

You’ve said Samantha brought a sweetness to the part of Elaine that wasn’t in your vision of it initially.

Her sweetness was something she did a little bit more on her own. I was trying to make it more of a horror movie and I realized she created her own arc with this that I was almost unaware of – that she brought her own stuff into it that we didn’t work on together and the naturalness, the sweetness and the sincerity in the good of Elaine, she did it more than I wanted her to, and I thought I’m going to go with that because that’s what’s working and I trust her performance more than my original idea of what I wanted. I’ve learned how to write better and to trust the actors more and give the actors more in the script and give them more to do so you get better actors.

In my original cut, I was minimizing her sweetness because I wanted her to be more scary and bringing her sweetness out more made it a more complex and interesting movie. I also cut back a lot of the other characters and enhanced Samantha, because I’d been cutting everybody, like a little bit here and there, equally, but I realized it has to be all about her, so I brought stuff I had cut of her and then I cut other people back and it worked. That’s something I should’ve known in the writing is it was her story, but you keep learning.

Is it true you didn’t know there were actual witches amongst your extras?

No, and there were a lot of them. [laughs] It’s interesting because they were artist models and there’s a big witchcraft scene in LA, but they were very helpful and very authentic because that’s who they are.

Was there a particularly crazy day on set?

Oh gosh. The most fun was the Renaissance Faire because I really felt I was transported back to the 14th century in Italy, watching all these people walking around in their beautiful silk costumes and bearing this special quality as they walked around. It was like being in a fairy tale as everybody inhabited that world, but it was really crazy because on one of those days, it just poured down rain, like it never does in Los Angeles. We had thunder and lightning and we were supposed to shoot [with] a horse that day and we couldn’t. We had a huge cast [and all the] crew, and we shot some stuff in the tents, but that’s all we could shoot, and we had to reschedule [the rest] for a few weeks down the line.

What was it like ultimately working with the horse?

There was a horrible day on set where it was a different horse and [Samantha Robinson and Jeffrey Vincent Parise] were going to be riding on the horse together for the ending sequence and the horse threw them. They flew up in the air and it was horrible. Neither of them were seriously injured —after about an hour, they were able to walk around — but it was shocking. It was just unbelievable. So we replaced the horse and we got the scene.

With so much of yourself invested in every aspect of this film, what’s it like seeing it all come together?

It’s wonderful when it comes together — it’s nerve-wracking when you’re editing. My first cut didn’t work actually. When I showed it to Samantha, and a few [other] people, it was a dud. [laughs] And I thought how could I have edited a dud with all this incredible footage. I realized I needed to come up with a strategy that isn’t exactly like the script. So we created a movie that works, but boy was that awful because every scene was beautiful in and of itself, but as a story, it wasn’t working. Every scene was played out too fully, and that’s another thing I learned making this movie — not every scene has to be a big pageant. Some scenes need to be shorter and some need to be longer, so I cut some of the scenes down to give it some of that cinematic balance. That’s something I learned about editing that’s going to go into the next script. With everything you do, you learn something.

“The Love Witch” opens in limited release on November 11th, including Los Angeles at the Nuart. A full schedule of theaters and dates is here.

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'The Love Witch': If You Aren't Using Style as Substance, You're Doing it Wrong

She uses her beauty and powers of seduction to ensnare men, but soon finds that her spells have unintended consequences. Robinson's nuanced performance brings a complex depth to the character, making her simultaneously alluring and dangerous. One of the most striking aspects of "The Love Witch" is its vibrant and carefully crafted visual style.

"You can have political, feminist, and intellectual ideas in a movie. But putting them in the visuals is the best way to make them work."

If you think the style of your film is "presenting reality as it is," you may be missing out on tools of great filmmaking. What about when lighting functions as psychology, or when color functions as symbolism?

No film is a better case study on this debate than Anna Biller’s The Love Witch, out in theaters this Friday courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories. (Find a theater that can project it as it should be seen—on 35mm— here.)

"I wanted not only for the witch to cast the spells, but I also wanted the movie to cast spells over the audience in terms of cinematic techniques."

In the few years it’s taken for the digital revolution to take root, we’ve shelved many techniques of classic cinema. Resurrecting classic Hollywood lighting, color symbolism, and screenwriting techniques, Anna Biller has created a delightfully handmade Technicolor thriller that gives you a rare glimpse into both the external and internal workings of a woman who loves men—to death.

Biller sat down with No Film School to talk about writing controversial female characters and how to use film as a construction.

No Film School: Some criticize films for prioritizing "style over substance." What do you think about this style and substance debate, and how does The Love Witch fit in?

Biller: In this case, the style is the substance. Content is very important in movies, and I think that the style directly informs the content. The style of The Love Witch is very much part of what I’m trying to say with the movie and the character.

The character is a witch. She makes magic. And I think cinema is a type of magic. I wanted not only for the character, Elaine, to cast the spells, but I [also] wanted the movie to cast spells over the audience in terms of cinematic techniques. The lighting technique, the gauzes over the lenses, the meticulous way that the color and sets are designed—it’s all very deliberate to create a type of hypnosis, or trance, over the audience.

"Whatever your own thing is—what you’re most obsessed with, what you love the most, what turns you on the most—just make that. Don’t listen to other people."

My favorite movies are the ones that are very conscious of not just being a documentary-like presentation of reality, but of making cinema into art. This is what we tried to do. It’s just how all movies were shot up until the modern period: they used film and certain types of lighting techniques to enhance the story and glamor. I’m interested in those techniques. Not because they are retro, but because they are incredible tools. The tools enhance the storytelling. The style is not in any way divorced from the content.

NFS: When you wrote this script, were you playing with or parodying the genre of films of the 1960s?

Biller: I’m not trying to write in the style from a certain period. It’s more the way I like to tell stories, rather than trying to make a commentary on the way in which scripts used to be written. I’m interested in certain types of pacing and telling a story in a certain kind of way that I think is old-fashioned.

It’s because I watched so many classic movies. Every filmmaker watches a lot of movies in order to figure out their own process. It’s just that most people are watching newer movies. Their screenwriting is more informed by films that have been written in the past five years. My screenwriting is informed by watching films in the early '30s up until the early '70s. I’m using those movies to learn my craft.

NFS: It’s interesting to think about being informed by cinema history because the majority of films ever made have been directed by men. There’s this concept of the "male gaze" in which female characters are seen through the eyes of a man, often as objects more so than functioning characters. So how do we write female characters without being influenced by the male gaze?

Biller: I’m interested in this idea of there being a female gaze. When I watch a movie and there’s a woman in it, I identify with that woman. My feelings are about the insides of that woman, how that woman is thinking, feeling. If that woman is glamorous or beautiful, I’m not thinking, "I want to sleep with her because she’s so hot." But I am also thinking, of course, "It’s great that she looks so good." Maybe I’m inspired by her hair and makeup. I want to look like her, too. Maybe I have a fantasy of being that beautiful.

"There haven’t been a lot of film theory essays talking about the female gaze. Just because film theory hasn’t examined it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist."

This is how I created the character of Elaine: as if there’s a female gaze. The women who respond to this movie aren't saying they are interested in sleeping with this woman. They’re saying, "I want to learn how to do my eyes like that." It’s the same gaze that exists in the beauty and fashion industry. Women look at other women in fashion magazines, and they’re wearing a ton of makeup, and they look beautiful. We recognize that the fashion industry isn’t created from the male gaze. We know the fashion and beauty industries are created for women. And they’re mainly run by women.

I don’t know why you can’t have that in a movie. There haven’t been a lot of film theory essays talking about the female gaze. Just because film theory hasn’t examined it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Credit: The Love Witch

NFS: So with the character of Elaine, it seems like her character is an open construction, with the audience experiencing both the internal and external aspects of her character.

Biller: That’s what I was trying to do exactly, to make these two things happen: look at Elaine internally and look at Elaine externally. I was trying to flip back and forth between those two positions throughout the film. When Elaine has voiceovers in her head—having flashbacks, or being in love—the audience is feeling her internal experience. When she’s being a total bitch to Trish in the Tea Room, stealing her man, and being an otherwise total sociopath, you’re looking at her from the outside, judging her.

I wanted to put the audience in the role of judging women, and at other times to have the audience just look at her: an opaque, beautiful woman. I wanted the point of view to keep flipping. It’s almost never like that with pictures of women.

"There's a kind of schizophrenia that women experience in our culture, a weird way that you distance yourself from yourself, and you become just an image for other people."

If you just did one or the other, you wouldn’t get the feeling of this split. There’s this split women experience within themselves, looking at themselves from both the inside and the outside. I think sometimes we experience ourselves as a shell, a surface or an image for other people, and not as a person. That’s a kind of schizophrenia that women experience in our culture. There’s this weird way that you distance yourself from yourself, and you become just an image for other people. It's an experience that men have much more rarely in our culture.

You mentioned the male gaze. I think women may watch films this way. Women are used to watching movies that are made primarily for male consumption. When they watch a woman in a movie, they watch a woman as if they themselves are not women. It’s a weird thing. That’s how, as women, we may often experience ourselves: continuously shifting points of view.

Credit: The Love Witch

Biller: There’s a dimension that women will get out of this film that men may not get. Transsexuals may experience this split, and maybe some gay men and gay women, too. But historically, men are not used to watching films that are made from the point of view of women. They are almost never called on to do that.

Women are necessarily paranoid about their image because everybody is judging you by your image—not by what you can do, who you are, what your skills are, how smart you are. You are treated differently depending on how you look. There’s all this pressure to be an image. It’s a terrible burden to bear, and that’s partly what I’m talking about in creating a character like this. Elaine is a hysterical embodiment of this perfect woman that every man wants. But what does it take to construct herself in this way every day? And have that be her whole identity? With the film, I’m trying to say that that pressure can drive you crazy.

NFS: It seems like you want the audience to be aware that the film is a construction. What does it allow you to do as a filmmaker—to give the audience that awareness?

Biller: That’s another way that you can politicize the film without being overly political in the text. For example, Elaine has this incredible, long, beautiful hair. You can get obsessed with it. Then she takes her hair off. Her hair underneath is much shorter and thinner. That’s a kind of construction that you can make your audience aware of so that you aren’t taking that initial obsession with her long hair for granted. She labors to be this way. It’s a construction in itself. Femininity is a construction.

"You don’t want to say, 'We’re looking at reality. This is exactly what’s happening." You want to say, "This is a construction of a certain type of reality. And we’re constructing it for a reason.'"

You also want to say that about a movie. You don’t want to say, "We’re looking at reality. This is exactly what’s happening." You want to say, "This is a construction of a certain type of reality. And we’re constructing it for a reason." You may have to think about why someone is constructing this reality. Why does this reality look the way it does? What does it all mean?

It’s like you’re breaking the fourth wall. It’s Brechtian. You’re making the audience think, "What are the themes and ideas of this movie?" You want to make people think about what they’re watching. It’s kind of a sly way of putting your ideas in a film so your ideas will be thought about a little more consciously. Rather than it being like a dream that washes over you, where you are unconscious, and you remain unconscious afterward, it’s a way to get the audience more engaged.

Credit: The Love Witch

NFS: Can you speak to the use of color and how it fits into this notion of style as substance?

Biller: Color can be very symbolic, and I had fun with that. Creating witchcraft symbolism colors, for example. There’s other color symbolism that when we talk about it, which sounds very obvious: Trish wears black when she’s in mourning, Elaine wears white when she wants to be a bride. In the Tea Room scene, the colors change. The first time we’re in the Tea Room, the color is pink. The idea is that, in the beginning, in this feminine Tea Room space, both women were the same. The second time we meet Elaine and Trish, they are on opposite sides, so they’re not both wearing pink.

Sure, it sounds simple, the idea of color symbolism. But it’s subconscious for the audience, and it’s very powerful. If you had those two characters dressed in the same color again, you would be implying a similarity or a circularity, or the idea that they hadn’t changed. That filters unconsciously into the audience's mind. If you want to characters to feel opposite, you put one in white and one in black. It’s almost too obvious to even believe it would work, but it actually does. It’s almost Pavlovian! Certain colors affect people in certain ways.

"You can create psychology in the script, but you can also create it with the lighting and the color."

You can create psychology in the script, but you can also create it with the lighting and the color. That’s one thing that film is so great at doing—creating these emotional effects. Film is not at its best when it is entirely intellectual! It’s at its best when it pulls things out of people emotionally, and we can relate to it on that level. You can have political, feminist, and intellectual ideas in a movie. But putting them in the visuals is the best way to make them work psychologically. That’s the craft of filmmaking.

Credit: The Love Witch

NFS: You designed a lot of the costumes and props (and even some of the music) in addition to writing and directing the film. Do you have a background those other areas, or are you self-taught?

Biller: I have a background in art, but I’m self-taught at sewing and design. Ever since I started making films, I’ve been making my own sets and costumes. That’s back when they were very tiny, short films. I’ve maintained my same process as my films have become bigger. I like the feel of control I get, but also I just like to create a very cohesive world.

When I was a studio artist, everyone created everything in their studio for a show. Creating a set is like creating an installation for a show. You do paintings, or people make clothes and dresses for their shows. So I guess I never stopped working in that way—making a movie like people make art in their studio. It’s not so organic to me to think about hiring other people to do everything. It’s also never been in my budget because I have these very ambitious films, in terms of the visuals. You need an army of people to create all this stuff, and you have to pay those people.

"Creating a set is like creating an installation for a show."

So I just go ahead, and say, "Okay, let’s create this, let’s start filming, let’s see where this takes me." I do a lot of sketching, and the things that I can’t buy, I’ll make. I’ll try to find vintage things for cheap. What I can’t find, I’ll make. Usually that ends up meaning a lot of sewing—costumes, drapes, pillows.

NFS: You’re no stranger to shooting on film, everything you’ve made has been either 16mm or 35mm—

Biller: Or Super 8!

NFS: Yes, Super 8! For The Love Witch, it’s obvious that for aesthetic reasons it had to be 35mm. What do you love about film and what was your working relationship with your DP, M. David Mullen, like in pre-production and on set, especially in coming up with this style?

Biller: There’s something about the texture of film: it looks great, no matter what you do to it. That is really the opposite in video—you have to work extremely hard to get a good image.

Credit: The Love Witch

Biller: In terms of my process, shooting film is very different on set than video—partly because you’re more mobile and you don’t have video village. I like the pressure of shooting fewer takes with the limitation of film. It makes everybody more focused. You need an extremely skilled crew that knows what they’re doing, so you get that level of professionalism on set, which I enjoy.

To expose film, you need high levels of light, and high levels of light create the kind of glamor and magic you used to have in older movies. You take film stock and combine it with light and you get cinema magic. If you use really high-speed film, and you don’t have to use a lot of light, and in that case, film and video aren’t as different. It’s really the light that creates the magic.

Everybody uses soft light now, or they try to use no light—they try to make it look like they aren’t using lights. They’ll enhance light, but it’s meant to look like they’re using natural light and not artificial light.

"The only way you can try to make something original is if it is personal."

You asked me about style and substance earlier, and the lighting is a big part of that discussion. For example, if I’m trying to make an actress cast a spell over the audience, a lot of that spell has to do with the way her face is lit. You can take the most beautiful girl in the world, and you can stick her in a room and not light her, and she’ll just look normal. Like a selfie. It's not glamor until you light it.

M. David Mullen and I had worked together before on a short film, and because of that I 100% trusted him. He’s a genius. I worked really hard to get him for this movie. I knew he knew how to do everything we needed for this kind of look. We met a few times during pre-production to go over the script, and he was very meticulous. He asked me a lot of questions. When we were on set, we hardly communicated at all because he’s so good as knowing exactly what I wanted. He would just light something, choose the right lens, the right framing. Everything would be perfect the first time!

Credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories

NFS: Was there specific reference material you shared with Mullen?

Biller: We are both cinephiles. The films I wanted to talk to him about were already in his collection that he’d seen a million times. It was more about getting him to watch a film again. Developing an eye for this required years and years and years of being a cinephile. We had the same movies in our eye.

I gave him a few more obscure titles, just to show that there was a range that we could go in. At times we could get into a more low-budget look, for example, if we didn’t have the resources. I wanted him to know it didn’t always have to look like a perfect studio movie. He did lots of stuff with filtration on the lenses, and other stuff he didn’t discuss with me—he just did it. Because he knew exactly what I wanted. I was very lucky.

NFS: What's your advice for filmmakers looking to explore topics and bend genres?

Biller: Make whatever movie you want to make. Make whatever your own thing is—that you’re most obsessed with, what you love the most, what turns you on the most. Be as weird as you want. Make your own movie. People should stop copying other people and try to do what’s inside of their own head. [Filmmakers] are always successful when they do what is really personal to them. The only way you can try to make something original is if it is personal. Because we’re all different.

Find out where you can see 'The Love Witch' on the big screen (or pre-order it!) here.

The love witch behind the scenes

Bridget is joined by a new co-host, Jade, to interview Anna Biller, writer and director of the Love Witch. This California Institute of the Arts graduate has directed two feature length films and plans on creating effective female centered horror movies.

What was your inspiration behind The Love Witch?

​I wanted to talk about my life as a woman and I wanted to talk specifically about heartbreak. I wanted to use metaphors and symbols. The symbol of a witch, misunderstood women have always been designated as witches. Most women feel different, they feel like they’re not the norm, the man is the norm and the woman is weird. You feel weird and you feel like a witch and you feel like there’s something wrong with you. That is until you get a little older and you start talking to women out of high school or a mature type of setting where you realize that actually, I’m not weird, I'm just a woman. 51 percent of the population has made you feel bizarre about you, and that’s such a universal feeling. I wanted to talk about women being persecuted as witches and also what it is to be a witch on the inside. Kind of a feeling of crazy but also an affirmative feeling. Feeling great about being different and being a woman. I wanted to talk about heart break because I had an experience of heartbreak and I wanted to put that emotionally on the screen.

There’s been a lot of talk about how this film has been sabotaged by male crew members, can you talk about that and your on set experience?

I don’t like to be negative, I was actually kind of sorry I wrote those tweets because I felt like people who were really great on the crew didn’t know how to differentiate themselves as if I was talking about the whole crew even though I was careful to say it was only some of the crew. I want to first say that I had some great crew members and that they were amazing, I don’t want to talk about ​ them ​ negatively. I do feel that being a female director, not just in this film but with all of my films has been a struggle because I think you get into this dynamic with men sometimes, where they really can’t deal with having a female in charge. You can tell it’s an emotional, very deep issue with them so you don’t want to brush against it too hard, but on the other hand you have stuff that needs to get done. One kind of experience I’ll have, is I’ll tell someone to do something and I dread in terror that they might do it wrong, and not because it’s so inconvenient for me if they do it wrong but that I can’t tell a man that he’s done something wrong because what happens if you tell a man he’s wrong, that he did something wrong, or got a fact wrong, he will just go berserk. Not even necessarily on the outside, but he might go berserk on the inside. If you get even one crew member feeling like that, the whole set can turn against you. How do you run a set without being able to tell someone to re-do something that’s actually really important, a crucial thing that somebody needs to know? So you just hope and pray and beg that the men on the set don’t do anything wrong. Half the time I won’t tell them, I just clean up the mess and don’t tell anybody. I’ll even absorb huge costs.

One guy on my film damaged a truck, “You ran into a tree and didn’t tell me?”. And I was in terror of telling him, I had to pay thousands of dollars in insurance, and I didn’t tell him. I thought, if I tell him, and if it gets around to the male crew that I criticized him, then maybe the whole crew will turn against me. It’s better to pay a 2500 deductible then have the whole crew turn against me. It’s this male female dynamic that gets kind of weird. On a short film, one of the carpenters was fine taking instructions but the other could just not take instructions from me. So he’d put a wall in the wrong place and I had to tell the other guy; I couldn’t tell him. The other guy would tell him. That is sexism and it’s very dressing because you’re trying to run a set, but literally you can make one comment on the first week and that’s it for whatever person of the crew is geared to feel that way about women, which is usually at least half.

Do you consider your films feminist?

​No, no I don’t, I think that very few films are feminist, I think that politics is something that doesn’t often enter into entertainment films. What I’ll say is that my films are feminine on purpose, they're from a female point of view. You don’t get a female point of view from just being a woman, you get a female point of view by consciously being very specific and honest with yourself about how your thinking might be different from that of men. How your experiences might have been different from that of men, and then trying to create characters and situations and stories around that, but you have to be conscious of doing it. Most people just copy other people’s writing. Most of the movies and culture are made by men and most people copy other people’s work and most people including men aren’t really that self reflective and introspective in their writing. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it’s a different way of working. I have a consciously female way of writing. Is that feminist? That’s up for interpretation. It is consciously differentiation itself from a masculine way of thinking.

A question from Amelie from Chicago - do you have any advice for first time directors?

​Make sure that when you’re making something, you're making something that you really want to make. That you really like and that you’re willing to live with for many many years. Make sure you really prepare, think about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and who it’s for. Mostly for yourself, but also try to find a universal thing so that other people can relate. Think about who your audience is, and if you love what you’re doing, then other people are going to love it too.

You played a role in your self-made film Viva, what impacted your decision to not also play a role in the love witch?

To be honest, that was a terribly difficult thing to do, to be in front of and behind the camera. I did it on the short films and it wasn’t that hard because they were just a weekend here and there but then doing it in a feature was terrible. Part of it was that I couldn’t really move the camera, we didn’t even have play back, I didn’t want to have this huge surprise of what it was going to look like when I got the footage back. I’ve had DP’s move the camera in ways that were really offensive to me in the past. I tend to not let the DP move the camera, I don’t have camera
movement and that was kind of obnoxious. I had some dolly shots when I wasn’t in the shot, but it was really hard.

It was also hard to go back and forth between the mode of acting and directing. I had to really blank myself out when I was acting, but I didn’t have the internal space to prepare for the character, so I felt like it really hurt the performance. It would have been so much better if someone had just been dedicated to performing. It was terrible being in the makeup chair while I should have been directing. I’d be in a different room and I would come back and it would be all wrong, the camera would be in the wrong place and the setup would be wrong, and they wouldn’t have followed my storyboard, and they'd have to relight it. I need to be out there by the camera at all times not in the makeup room, and then the makeup artist refused to do my makeup on set. He said “no because you’re moving your face too much and you're moving your mouth too much, you’re talking your looking” and I had to be still.

The other reason is I didn't enjoy performing as much after that. I felt very objectified, I objectified myself as an experiment and I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like having the camera on me. I want this kind of image of female beauty and I don’t think I fulfill it. When I was doing it as an experiment in an art film it was more about the discrepancy between my own image and what I was aspiring to be, and then I didn’t want that discrepancy anymore, I just wanted to pick a really gorgeous woman, where there wouldn’t be any issues with the looks.

Can you talk a little bit about your new film Bluebeard?

​I’m so excited about Bluebeard. I had a lot of problems about getting it off the ground, I’ve been working really hard on it, it’s just a new territory for me, doing a film through a studio or through regular financing channels and I’ve never experienced it - even though I have a really good agent, I have problems navigating that world. I had it set up and then the places fell through, and then finally I had it set up in a new place where it really seemed like it was just about to go, and then the pandemic hit. Now nobody can film and all those independent companies are going under, and they’ll probably be gone by the time this thing ends. It’s really sad.

The movie itself, I’m so excited by because The Love Witch was kind of visually inspired by these 60’s pulp novels with witches on the covers, sexy witches, and then Viva was visually inspired by ads and cartoons from playboy magazine and this one is inspired by those vintage romance pulp novels with women running from castles with their hair blowing, wearing an incredible night gown or a beautiful dress, very gothic. It’s just hyper hyper gothic. I was mainly inspired by these old Hollywood movies like Gaslight, Suspicion, and Rebecca, and all these movies where there’s a scary husband and you don’t know if he’s trying to kill you or the love of your life. Those are some of my favorite movies, so I wanted to emulate that through the Bluebeard fairy tale.

​The Bluebeard fairy tale is the archetypal fairy tale that your husband wants to kill you. Those classic movies about that are called Bluebeard movies. The whole gothic romance concept comes from Bluebeard stories. A dangerous man, you know wuthering heights, in a castle, you find him very hot and sexy yet you’re afraid of him. It’s a metaphor for any type of dating, relationship, or marriage, where you never know whether the man is safe or not. You can be sucked into falling madly in love and marrying someone and having their babies before you realize that they’re a psycho killer. You think about horror, and they always say draw on your worst fears, I think for many women that is their worst fear, to fall madly in love with a psycho. You’re giving them your life, your love, your feelings, and your time and get so involved that you can’t get out. For straight women I guess.

What route do you plan on going with Bluebeard one it’s done? Do you plan on putting it in festivals? How did the pandemic affect your decision on this film?

I think this should go straight to Cannes, that’s my dream. I’m going to skip past Sundance this time, even though I’ve never actually gotten into Sundance. It’s such a European type of film, it’s such a British film. I would definitely like to do festivals and hope for some kind of theatrical release, because it has the potential to be kind of a cult film, because so many women are interested in these themes and I’m planning to make it a very beautiful type of color. The issue with the pandemic is that I can’t shoot, or even finance or cast right now. In the meantime I’ve written another script, and I might then write another script, depending on how long this goes on. These scripts are cheaper than Bluebeard and might be easier to finance and so Bluebeard might not be the next one I do. Everyone has less money now to invest in movies, so that’s one reason why I’m writing cheaper things. I’m really hoping I can make Bluebeard next but it might not be the next one.

You tweeted something about how naked bloody women screaming in horror films is not feminist horror, would you ever make a slasher film where this wasn’t the case and how would you change these stereotypes in the horror genre?

That’s one thing I was kind of interested in doing with Bluebeard and this other horror film that I just wrote, is this idea that you can have a horror film and you can have women getting killed and you9 can have it be a slasher but it’s not from the killer’s point of view. The old --- movies were never from the killer’s point of view, it wasn’t until 1960 that you ever had a movie from the killer’s point of view. Psycho and Peeping Tom both came out in 1960, and they were the first movies that did that, and ever since then, most slasher movies are from the killers point of view. So what I’m trying to do with Bluebeard and this other medieval horror movie that I just wrote and whatever slasher movies I may write, is I want to take it back to the female point of view. You’re in the victim’s point of view. In the female's point of view, the ten discarded female bodies before the final girl survives; you couldn’t have that because each one would be too sad. You can’t just throw away female bodies like that, it doesn’t matter if there’s a final girl at the end.

​If you’re doing it from a female point of view, you can't just discard that many women, maybe one or two women could die, but they would have to be tragic. In filmmaking, you want to create a feeling. I feel like filmmakers always try to create the most extreme feelings in the audience by having the killing be more extreme, the violence be more extreme, but if you want to elicit more emotions from an audience, create a character that people care about, that will elicit strong feelings. If you feel like you know that person and that person dies, that’s going to give you more feeling than if the gore is just a little more fancy. It’s the idea of making a more effective horror movie.

​The reason Psycho is more famous than almost every slasher movie is because of how expertly the characters are drawn. It wasn’t about the gore, it was in black and white, you couldn't even see the gore that much. It’s not about the thrill of the shower scene, it’s not about the sexualized violence, the majority of people who tried to copy psycho, get it wrong. They’re copying the things in Psycho that aren’t the things that make it great. The important thing that Hitchcock always did, even in the thirties and the twenties, was have great characters and create empathy,pathos, humor, good, writing, and good editing. That’s what makes it an effective movie.

Is Hitchcock one of your inspirations?

More and more so, the more I study him! He’s kind of incredible because even in the 30’s he was doing really sophisticated stuff with the relationship between men and women. Between married couples and his understanding of both male and female psychology surrounding relationships and love was very deep. I think the writers in a lot of the early thirties and forties movies were women, but a lot of the male writers and directors learned how to be extremely empathetic to women as well because women were really driving the box office so there was a need to create great female characters. Once the censorship codes exploded and the new Hollywood aesthetic kicked in, everything has been about men ever since. This has been 50 years now. Not that I’d like to go back in time, but we can go forward in the future with having great female characters.

Both of your parents were in art and design fields and you do design all of your sets; do they have inspiration in that? Do you think you would still be doing it if they weren’t in those fields?

Probably not. One thing about growing up with artists, you tend to learn about life through your parents and what is possible. I saw them making stuff all the time, like my mom made these beautiful dresses, she was always the best dressed and had the most incredible clothes and all of her friends were wearing her clothes that she designed. So everyone was wearing her clothes. We didn't have any money, we were poor, but she had the best clothes. My dad too, he just made everything, swing sets and bunk beds, and we never bought anything. We didn’t ever have a bed that we bought, it was a slab of foam rubber on a board and cinder blocks, everything was sort of weird. It wasn’t ever about money, it was just about making stuff, so I just grew up with the mentality that if you want something you have to make it. I guess that was really ingrained in me.

After I went to UCLA, I went into the art department there, I went to New York and I worked in photo studios. I happened to get this job as a photo assistant, I was assistant to the stylist and I helped her create sets. They were shooting wallpaper catalogues, so we had to create rooms. Just a little corner of a room and it was super hoaky because it would be this wallpaper and it would match the fabric of the couch and it was amazing to me because it would remind me of those little technicolor movies where everything would match. I learned how easy it is to fake wallpaper, a few pieces of wood, fake upholster a couch, fake do this and fake do that. I would lug the extra rolls of wallpaper and extra bolts of fabric home on the subway and I would create these little sets in my basement apartment, and I started making super eight movies. I would make this Victorian dress for some girl in front of the wall, and that’s how I started making movies. I would drag furniture from the street, and it was like a railroad apartment, it was 7 feet wide, it was super long, like 40 feet long so when you get the camera back. Very weird.

How old were you when you started making films?

I started making videos before that. When I was at UCLA in the art department I started making videos when I was about 19 or 20.

Another question from Amelie from Chicago - how many rewrites did you do for The Love Witch?
So many that I can’t even count them. They wouldn’t necessarily be full rewrites, I would change some of the dialogue in one scene and I’d save it as a new job and I’d tweak a little bit more. I didn’t really completely change it, I just kept tweaking it for years. By the time I was done with it, it was quite different from when I started, but I didn’t actually ever do a full rewrite. I was teaching myself how to write. I didn’t really know how to write, because Viva was kind of a weird script. I wanted to write a conventional script and for some reason it was very hard for me to do that whale also keeping my themes in the front like I wanted, and keeping the visuals like I wanted. I didn’t think that way. I thought in terms of sets and visuals, in scenarios and taboos, I didn't think in terms of a script so it really took me a while. Now I love writing, my new scripts are better and better because I know what I’m doing a little bit.

[In the Love Witch] When Elaine is taking off her clothes for the first man and it starts getting really colorful like a kaleidoscope, did you use a lens for that or was that post-production?

It was a lens, but here’s this company named Koken, and in the 70’s they made all of these filters, and they were super psychedelic. The filter made something like that lens. You rotate the lens, it’s a rainbow filter. It creates rainbows whenever there are lights, so it created rainbows for the chandelier and the candles and any lights that you would see. All the effects are in camera.

Is that how Bluebeard’s going to be? Just strictly in camera effects instead of post-production?
I’d really prefer it. When you’re trying to emulate a period look, that’s one of the main things that makes it look period, if you do your effect in camera. You don’t do CGI. It doesn’t have the same depth. Jurassic Park is so impressive the way the dinosaurs look, but they don’t have the depth of a Ray Harry Housand movie. Like those claymation sort of monsters and they look so 3D, so real even though the movements are kind of jerky. They’re kind of scarier because they are really in the space.

What’s one major goal or dream as a filmmaker that you want to achieve in the future?

I want to make my fricken Bluebeard movie. I want to make that and then I want to make more movies. It’s just my dream, my dream is to keep going. To get financed and to keep going, and to get distributed, that would be amazing. So that more people see it.

Anna Biller, who not only directed but also wrote, produced, and designed the film, meticulously researched and recreated the look of 1960s Technicolor films. The result is a visually stunning experience that feels like a lost gem from that era. The attention to detail extends beyond just the visuals. The film's set designs are meticulously planned and executed to create a sense of nostalgia and glamour. Each location, from Elaine's witchy apartment to the gothic Victorian mansion, is carefully decorated to enhance the film's themes. In addition to the visuals, the film's script and dialogue also pay homage to the melodramas of the past. The characters speak in a stylized manner, reminiscent of the heightened emotions and dramatic flair of the 1960s films that inspired "The Love Witch." This attention to detail further adds to the film's immersive experience. Overall, the behind-the-scenes work on "The Love Witch" is what truly sets it apart. From the director's meticulous attention to detail to the actors' captivating performances, every aspect of the film is carefully crafted to transport viewers into a world of love spells and witchcraft. It is a true testament to the power of filmmaking as an art form..

Reviews for "Bringing the Past to Life: Recreating the 1960s Aesthetic in "The Love Witch"

1. John - 1/5 stars

I was really looking forward to watching "The Love Witch Behind the Scenes" as I enjoyed the original movie. However, I was extremely disappointed with this behind-the-scenes featurette. It lacked depth and substance and felt more like a promotional video than an insightful look into the making of the film. The interviews with the cast and crew were shallow and didn't provide any meaningful insights. Overall, I felt like I wasted my time watching this, and it didn't enhance my appreciation for the movie in any way.

2. Sarah - 2/5 stars

I found "The Love Witch Behind the Scenes" to be quite underwhelming. The behind-the-scenes footage was poorly edited and disjointed, making it difficult to follow the progression of the production. Additionally, the interviews with the cast and crew felt superficial and lacked any real depth. I was hoping to gain more insight into the creative process behind the film, but this featurette failed to deliver. Overall, I wouldn't recommend watching this unless you're a die-hard fan of the movie.

3. Emily - 2/5 stars

"The Love Witch Behind the Scenes" was a disappointing watch for me. The interviews with the cast and crew felt staged and lacked authenticity. I was hoping to get a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and triumphs of making this unique film, but instead, I found it to be a promotional piece that offered little substance. The editing also felt choppy, making it difficult to fully grasp the flow of the production. Overall, this featurette was a missed opportunity to provide a more insightful look into the creation of "The Love Witch."

4. Michael - 1/5 stars

I found "The Love Witch Behind the Scenes" to be a complete waste of time. The interviews were bland and lacked any interesting anecdotes or behind-the-scenes stories. The editing was choppy and made it hard to follow the progress of the production. I was hoping for a more in-depth look into the creative decisions behind the film and the challenges faced by the cast and crew. Unfortunately, this featurette fell short and added little value to the overall experience of "The Love Witch." I would recommend skipping this altogether.

Behind the Spells: Exploring the Witchcraft Secrets of "The Love Witch