American Cinematographer - September 2016 - 28

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Canon EOS C300 Mark I, EOS-1D Mark IV;
GoPro Hero4 Black; Blackmagic Design
Pocket Cinema Camera, Production Camera
4K; Red Epic Mysterium-X
Duclos, Red, Canon
28

September 2016

Star-crossed lovers Wawa (Marie Wawa) and Dain (Mungau Dain) flee their tribe in order
to be together in the feature Tanna, which was shot on the island of the same name in the
Vanuatu archipelago.

Trouble in Paradise
By Simon Gray

There has never been a version of
the archetypal "doomed lovers" story quite
like the one told in Tanna. A core crew of
two - cinematographer/co-director Bentley Dean and location sound recordist/codirector Martin Butler - shot the movie in
Yakel, a traditional village high in the hills of
Tanna, an island in the Vanuatu archipelago.
Performed entirely in the little-known
Nauvhal language, Tanna is Vanuatu's first
feature. The picture has won numerous
accolades, including the Best Cinematography Award and Audience Award for Best
Feature Film at the 2015 Venice Film Festival's International Film Critics' Week.
Dean believes that "among the
myriad Pacific Islands, Tanna is probably the
strongest in following Kastom [Melanesian
traditional culture]. A few tribes, such as the
villagers of Yakel, still hunt with bows and
arrows and make their traditional clothes
and houses entirely from materials gathered
in the surrounding jungle. Their days begin
with the rising sun and end with a kava
ceremony at sunset. It's a way of life that
has all but disappeared in modern times."
Only 25x12 miles, Tanna bursts at
the seams with dense rainforest; both
black- and white-sand beaches; brilliant
corals; pristine, iridescent water; and the
stark grey ash plain of an active volcano, the
1,184' Mt. Yasur. Dean and Butler had great
locations - all they needed were a script
American Cinematographer

and a cast. "Our pitch to the villagers was to
collaborate on a story that would come
from and be acted by them," Dean recalls.
"We showed the whole tribe Rolf De Heer's
Ten Canoes [AC March '07] on our solarcharged laptop to demonstrate the type of
film Martin and I wanted to make - and
indeed what a film was, because few had
seen one before."
The plot of Tanna originated from a
real-life dispute in the 1980s over an
arranged marriage. "Star-crossed lovers,
intra- and inter-tribal disputes, challenges to
the status quo of tradition - we were fascinated by all these powerful and dramatic
themes," Dean says. The details of the story
were then plotted out over the next two
months with Butler, script editor Janita Suter
and the inhabitants of Yakel.
High-spirited Wawa (Marie Wawa) is
in love with Dain (Mungau Dain) - the son
of Village Chief Charlie (Chief Charlie Kahla)
- but their nuptial plans are thwarted
when a tribal decision is made to pair Wawa
with someone else. Due to an attack on the
Yakel shaman (Albi Nangia) by men from
the Imedin tribe, the peacekeeping chief
(Chief Mungau Yokay) has arranged for an
end to hostilities if Wawa marries an Imedin
man. Determined to be together, Wawa
and Dain flee their tribe.
Dean and Butler's combined experience on both short- and long-form documentaries ideally positioned them to tackle
such an unusual project. While shooting
their feature-length production Contact

Tanna photos by Philippe Penel, courtesy of Lightyear Entertainment.

filter only for exteriors, to enhance the
contrast in sky and clouds," she says.
"The people are not used to a camera,
so it's a bit of a struggle to capture them,"
Radwan continues. "They often are shy or
think they need to perform for the camera. In
that sense, it was good that I was by myself.
I captured beautiful moments of Aisholpan,
particularly at school, where I encouraged her
to talk to her friends about her experience as
an eagle huntress, which she had never done
before."
Despite having multiple cinematographers shooting in various locations at different times of year, The Eagle Huntress is visually seamless. Niblett credits much of the
continuity to the cameras. "We captured in
full 5K on the Reds, 4K on the BM Cinema
Camera and 1080p raw on the Pocket
Camera," he explains. "The Epic is versatile
and robust, and the R3D files it produces are
highly gradable, which meant we could
match the cameras more easily. Both of the
Blackmagic cameras shoot raw DNG files, so
again it made the grade more efficient." The
grade was conducted at executive producer
Morgan Spurlock's New York studio, where
colorist Brian Boyd - with Niblett present -
worked with Blackmagic Design's DaVinci
Resolve.
Niblett has shot more than 200 documentaries in 150 countries, built some 18
drones of his own design, and flown them in
locations as remote as Antarctica. With The
Eagle Huntress he faced some of the toughest conditions of his career and returned with
brilliant imagery of a magnificent landscape
and the unique people who inhabit it. That
Niblett can artistically thrive on today's cutting
edge is due in part to the fact that he integrates the old with the new. As he says, "I
used my good old Ronford-Baker tripod,
which - in 30 years of owning all sorts of
equipment - is the only piece of equipment
I have had since I started in this job."

American Cinematographer - September 2016

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