American Cinematographer - September 2015 - 22

Production Slate

Boundless Strife
By Iain Stasukevich

Cartel Land follows the efforts of two citizen militias
- Arizona Border Recon and the Autodefensas in Michoacán,
Mexico - separated by distance and circumstance yet connected by
philosophy. Having applied both his directing and shooting expertise
to the feature documentaries Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare and Our Time, Matthew Heineman sought to make
"a more character-driven, immersive film. Cartel Land ended up
being that movie."
Heineman, who directed and produced Cartel Land and
shared shooting duties with cinematographer Matthew Porwoll, was
familiar with Mexico's drug wars from television, movies and his
tracking of the issue in the news, but he wanted to go beyond the
headlines to film the effects of the conflict on everyday people. A
Rolling Stone story on Arizona Border Recon first led Heineman and
Porwoll to ABR's de facto leader, Tim "Nailer" Foley. Foley's initial goal
had been to secure the border along the Arizona state line, but as he
uncovered information on the smuggling of narcotics, he switched
his focus to patrolling the Southern Arizona mountains in search of
cartel scouts and drug mules. After four months of filming, Heineman received an article from his father about the Grupos de Autodefensa Comunitaria, a grass-roots citizen militia tasked with breaking
the Knights Templar cartel's stranglehold on the Mexican state of
Michoacán.
"I saw a parallel story of vigilantism on both sides of the
border," says Heineman, who reached out to the leader of the
Autodefensas - Dr. José Manuel Mireles Valverde - and two weeks
later found himself shooting in Mexico. "At first, we thought it was
going to be a couple weeks of shooting, but that turned into nine
months of going back and forth," he notes. "And the story we got
was not the story that we started with. We thought it would be a
22

September 2015

very simple hero-and-villain story, like a Western, with guys in white
shirts fighting guys in black hats. Over time we learned that the
border between good and evil was more blurry than we thought."
Heineman first met Porwoll when he brought him on to
Escape Fire, which was shot by director of photography Wolfgang
Held, with Heineman and Porwoll serving as additional cinematographers. "The beautiful thing about working with [Porwoll] is that
we see the world in the same way," says Heineman. "We were
always in sync with the look and the feel of the film."
"There's something fascinating about getting to know real
people and hearing their personal stories and experiences," Porwoll
notes. "You have one take, one opportunity, and as much as you
plan things out in your head before you shoot, so much of what you
get comes down to how you respond to your subject."
The filmmakers agree that the clearest difference between
the two of them lies in how they used their cameras - in this case
the Canon Cinema EOS C300 with two Canon lenses: the EF-S 1755mm f2.8 IS USM and the EF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM. The C300
recorded 50Mb MXF files at 23.98 fps to onboard CF cards at
1920x1080, using the Canon C-Log setting.
"The Canon C300 was the perfect camera for us in terms of
ergonomics and the look we wanted to achieve," says Heineman.
"I love shooting with just the body of the camera. My setup was
literally the body, the lens, a shotgun mic, and a lavalier transmitter
for my main subject."
"I tend to like to shoot with the camera on my shoulder, for
stability and eye-line purposes," says Porwoll. "I hung a plate off the
back of the shoulder rig, which offered a little bit of counterweight,
and had a pouch with additional batteries, cards and a wireless lavalier kit, so I knew that whenever I picked up the camera I would have
everything I needed to shoot for the next four hours. My rig wasn't
significantly larger, but due to the smaller profile of Matt [Heineman's] camera, whenever the decision was made that only one

American Cinematographer

Cartel Land images courtesy of The Orchard.

A member
of the
Autodefensas -
a citizen militia
devoted to
striking back
against drug
cartels - stands
guard in
Michoacán,
Mexico in the
documentary
Cartel Land.

American Cinematographer - September 2015

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