How Andres Arochi brings Lady Gaga’s The Dead Dance to life
Cinematographer Andres Arochi was recently approached by Tim Burton to film Lady Gaga’s The Dead Dance video on the Island of the Dolls in the Xochimilco channels in Mexico City.
To create a vivid black and white fable, Arochi paired ARRI Alexa Mini LF with ZEISS Master Primes to meet Burton’s request to create a video that looked like nothing else in Lady Gaga’s catalogue.
“The location has so many colours that it’s hard to make it feel elegant,” explained Arochi. “It could easily become very kitsch.”
To overcome that challenge, he came up with the idea to shoot in black and white, with a sharp and contrasty look that could go toe-to-toe with a Burton universe. The director loved the idea immediately, and the two started building the visual language together from there.
In choosing the camera package, Arochi wanted something that could take a hit of hard, unforgiving light and stay disciplined about it. “I first imagined the light as very strong and old-school,” he said.
For that kind of thick shadows against bright, blasted highlights, Arochi needed glass designed to handle contrast. Vintage lenses were off the table because under that much hard light, old glass can start creating unwanted glow and haze. Instead, he turned to ZEISS Master Primes to hold the image together, providing crisp sharpness and control without flaring.
Prior to Gaga’s arrival, Arochi and the full crew spent a day on the island alone with Burton, testing dolls, smoke, and a black-and-white look-up table (LUT) built by colourist Mitch Paulson. Once the dolls were lit and the smoke billowing and the LUT was dialled in, Arochi walked over to the monitor where Burton was sitting and watching. “It was already starting to look like a Tim Burton movie,” Arochi recalled. “That’s just the power of him — whatever he chooses and creates has such a powerful aesthetic.”
The final music video, said Arochi, is a brilliant collision of two distinct sensibilities: the crisp, whimsical austerity of Burton’s black-and-white world set against Lady Gaga’s own brand of theatrical, seductive oddity.
Neither aesthetic overshadows the other, which is exactly the balance Arochi and his ZEISS Master Primes set out to hold.
