American Cinematographer - April 2008 - 68

Sundance 2008: Mining for Movies King of Ping Pong director of photography Askild Vik Edvardsen, FSF, FNF (right) at work on another project. prize for Best Cinematography in the category of World CinemaDramatic, as well as the Jury Prize in the same category. Described by the director as a “Norrland Buddhist tragicomic family drama,” King of Ping Pong tells the story of two young brothers. Rille (Jerry Johansson) is a pudgy, unpopular 16-year-old who is typically either bullied or ignored — except in the community center’s table-tennis room, where he rules. By contrast, his younger brother, Erik (Hampus Johansson), is cute and hangs with the cool kids. During winter break, their absentee father, a hopeless drunk and ladies’ man, turns up, and tensions mount when the boys learn that he is father to only one of them; the other was sired by the town loser. A rift builds between the brothers, and resentment explodes at a teen dance. Ultimately, Rille finds peace of mind when he learns to forgive and accepts his destiny as an underdog. Inspired by individuals he met while researching another script in the northern reaches of Sweden, Jonsson knew King of Ping Pong needed to be filmed in that area. Locations included the remote min68 April 2008 ing town of Gällivare, close to the border with Norway, and Luleå, a town on the Baltic Sea. (Interiors were shot in a Stockholm studio.) The snowy terrain inspired the filmmakers’ white-as-milk idea, and the fact that this approach would be a challenge was an added bonus. Ever since they met at the Swedish National Film School, Jonsson and Edvardsen have set stylistic challenges for themselves with each new project; one short film consisted entirely of two fixed-camera closeups, and another was shot in blackand-white at 1.33:1 with an emphasis on square compositions and framing the actors’ eyes at dead center. To facilitate King of Ping Pong’s look, production designer Josefin Åsberg sought out white houses, white cars and pastel interiors. Meanwhile, Edvardsen and Jonsson devised a plan for the cinematography that entailed a traditional approach from start to finish. “Because everything would be white, we chose to shoot anamorphic [2.40:1] and use 50-ASA film when we could to get as much information as possible,” says Edvardsen. He shot exteriors on Kodak Vision2 50D 5201 and interiors on 500T 5218. “The grain is so good now even the 50 and the 500 cut together really well,” he notes. During production, Edvardsen softened the image further by using smoke in almost every scene, and during post, the filmmakers chose to cut negative, finish photochemically and print on Fuji F-CP3510 — all in an effort to maintain images that were rich in detail, delicacy and nuance within that upper range of whiteness. Edvardsen operated an Arricam Lite equipped with Hawk V-Series anamorphic lenses. He mainly used the 30mm, 50mm and 75mm focal lengths, relying most heavily on the 50mm. (He also used a Hawk 46-230mm zoom.) “I wanted to give the actors a bit of head space in the frame,” he says. Also, Jonsson wanted a slightly distanced perspective to show Rille interacting with other characters in a social context. A number of key scenes were filmed as single takes, including a scene in which the boys’ father jumps into a hole cut into ice and stays underwater for a long stretch of time. “[Filming the action in one take] is a complicated technical solution to making the scene work,” says Jonsson. “You create suspense; if the guy is underwater for 20 seconds and there are no cuts, you know it’s real.” In another instance, Rille gets roughed up by bullies while he and his brother are sitting with two girls at a picnic table near the community center. As the sequence begins, Rille is shown talking as the camera dollies around the table from profile to straight-on view; over Rille’s shoulder, we see the town bullies arriving on scooters and cars. Their leader orders them to beat up Rille, who is rolled around and kicked in the snow. “That was a five-minute take,” says Edvardsen. “The camera’s slowly moving, and the scooters and

American Cinematographer - April 2008

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