American Cinematographer - December 1997 - 122

frazzled sleuth shrouds
the window with a

Top:
Investigator
Jonas Engstrom

tarp-like cloth. But

(Stellan

each time he tries to

Skarsgard)

sleep, a rip in the fab¬

sniffs the hair of
a

murderee,

detecting the
scent of

shampoo. The
haunting
prologue of
Insomnia

depicts the
girl's grisly
murder in grainy
Super 8 images.
Bottom:

the Arctic

the victim's

way

garbage dump
where the

police found the
mutilated
corpse. The
detective is

has 24 hours of
daylight during the
summer. Skjoldbjaerg
and award-winning
Norwegian director
of photography Erling
wrecked, Hard Asphalt

film's subdued

production
design.

(Enigma, Ship¬

and Best Foreign Film Oscar-nomiThe Pathfinder) maximized this

nee

omnipresent sunlight by devising a
style the director describes as "re¬
verse

film noir"

-

hence, protago¬

nist

Engstrom often appears in sil¬
houette. This aesthetic approach
offers "an aggressive, nightmarish
type of white light" to which the in¬
vestigator becomes increasingly
sensitive as he delves deeper into
the murder case. For example, dur¬
ing scenes in which the character is
situated before
alone or with

pane's blinds

a
a

window (either

colleague), the
burst with

seem to

brilliance.
The narrative's bleak tone
also led the filmmakers to imbue
Insomnia with a cool blue hue, how¬
ever.

Bright, primary colors

were
excluded from Eli Bo's muted pro¬
duction

design, which was shaded
heavily with ochre, brown and
baby blue. The film was photo¬
graphed on Kodak's Vision 500T
5279 stock (sans filters). Fow-key
lighting was the order of the day;
Thurmann-Andersen primarily
deployed temperature-balanced
daylight sources, such as HMI
lamps. Kino Flos and other fluores¬

"I set up a 6K HMI outside
the set, then bounced it into a mir¬
ror and
through the hole in the
sources.

sheet," Thurmann-Andersen

ex¬

plains. "I also used a little smoke
inside the set to highlight the ray
coming through. It's a simple tech¬
nique that works very well when
you're short of space or you need a
cheap effect. I tend to use mirrors
a lot because it's a
practical way of
getting light into places where it's
impossible to put a lamp."
Throughout the $2 million
production's 6 VS-week schedule
(which took place in June and July
of last year), Thurmann-Anderson
utilized

a

Moviecam, out of

an

ap¬

escape through a hidden under¬
pass, one of the only instances in
which darkness prevails in the
frame. After discovering this pas¬

Engstrom gives chase
only the extended beam of a
flashlight to guide his path.

sageway,
with

Thurmann-Andersen discloses, "I
lit this location
a
very short tun¬
nel down here in Oslo
by put¬
-

-

ting a mirror on the ground and
bouncing a 6K HMI into the mirror
and down the tunnel, which I then
filled up with smoke. I then had

Engstrom run through the tunnel
with his flashlight. It was hard to
cover
up the light and make it sen¬
sible, but filling up the tunnel with

preciation for its silence and mobil¬
ity. Most of the picture's camera
moves are
quite sedate, but the
filmmakers utilized a flurry of fre¬
netic handheld shots during the
police's bungled setup scheme to
illustrate the high-strung Engstrom's

smoke made it somewhat easier."

loss of control.
As the film progresses,

working on Sancta Simplicitas in
Norway, while Skjoldbjaerg is
planning a summer shoot for his
sophomore feature, The Escape

Engstrom is increasingly subject to
an

erratic emotional state;

his

Insomnia

acquired Ameri¬

distribution through First Run
Features and Castle Hill Produc¬
can

tions, and will be released stateside
sometime in the upcoming spring.
Thurmann-Andersen is currently

dark thriller about five

growing agitation stems from both

Artist,

his incessant insomnia and his

twentysomething kids who emi¬
grate to Spain and soon find

pressed guilt

over

re¬

his partner's

death. "We didn't want to

a

overem¬

themselves embroiled in trouble.

Throughout the film,
Engstrom is tormented by sleep¬
lessness. Eloping to obscure the

phasize the subtext of repression
through the performance, but rather
express it through quite subtle

♦

sunlight in his bedroom, the

camerawork," declares Skjoldbjaerg.

American

December 1997

cent fixtures

118

used for fill.

unease.

each other. We wanted to express
the idea that the law enforcement
and the criminal are almost one
and the same."
When the psychopath
foils the cop's trap, he effects an

Thurmann-Andersen,
FNF

rest com¬

fortably on any one thing. This cre¬
ates a feeling of claustrophobia and

accepted film language - leaving
left and entering left, instead of
leaving left and entering right -
especially when the protagonist
and antagonist are confronting

Circle, this

dressed in

complement the

"We also went for untraditional composition, so that
viewers wouldn't focus on the
middle of the frame," he continues.
"Characters come through the
frame in angles that are opposed to

of northern Nor¬

deliberately
muted attire to

rapher effected this
stray sunlight with
one of his
trusty HMI
its high latitude within
area

friend to the

that your eyes can never

illumination; due to

Engstrom drags

really about this
journey, we al¬
ways stay at his eye level. And the
sets are clean and simple - flat
lighting and flat backgrounds - so

a beam of
white-hot light to fall
across his field of vi¬
sion. The cinematog¬

ric allows

recent

"Since the film is

main character's

were

Cinematographer
American Cinematographer - December 1997

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