American Cinematographer - May 2005 - 16

"I like

Right: Isak and
spend
the night under a
Lem must

sion," the

"For the candlelit

tree as

flannel

punishment for

an
infraction. Below:

not as a

scenes,

continues.
I used white

bounce, but right on

light shining
through it. You lose a lot of intensity,
but the light is so beautiful. Also, I

Cinematographer
gets the
compound's
courtyard ready
a

all kinds of diffu¬

the source, with the

Suki Medencevic

for

to use

cameraman

couldn't

use

dimmers

with the

HMIs, so I would manually dim the
lights simply by sliding a piece of

shot in the

light of dusk.

sheet metal

across

them."

One of Medencevic's favorite

shows Lem and Isak spending
night standing under a tree as
punishment for an infraction. The
production had no Condors or
scenes

the

the

exception of red,

ated

with

a

color associ¬

communism,"

says

Medencevic. "A

key plot develop¬
pair of shorts,
and we figured out ways to incorpo¬
rate more red into the story."
Day exteriors were filmed in a
mix of available light and a few
HMIs. For day interiors, such as
ment concerns

classroom

this

scenes,

HMIs

were set up

outside the windows.

"Eliminating
light stands in the room helped the
kids forget it was a movie set, which
allowed them
says

to

feel

more

natural,"

Medencevic.

Given that he was frequently
relying on ambient daylight, the
cinematographer used Fuji Reala
500D, which "has great color render¬
ing and was very flexible later in the
digital intermediate [DI]," as often as
possible. However, because it was
difficult to ship film stock in from
Germany on a regular basis, he often
mix different film stocks in

had

to

the

same

was

available

location
on

which included

using whatever

the

camera

truck,

Fuji's Super F-64D

and Super
prayed that the DI
would help smooth out all those
differences," he says with a laugh.
The show's camera package
8522, Super F-250D 8562
F-500 8572. "I

came

from Blue Danube Media in

Vienna, Austria, and included

Compact, a Moviecam
Super America and an Arri 435,
along with Cooke S4 primes, a Zeiss
10mm

lens, and Nikon 200mm and

400mm lenses.

The Great Water plays on

both
metaphorical levels. Isak is
a
mysterious figure whom Lem sees
as his
key to survival in the camp.
Although the character is intended to
be Christ-like, Trajkov wanted to
maintain a sense of ambiguity. "On
day exteriors, we generally tried to
keep Isak backlit, which put a slight
literal and

rim around

him," notes Medencevic.

The character's first appearance coin¬
cides with a sudden shift in the
weather. As he

enters the courtyard,
sky darkens and it starts to rain.
When he looks up, the rain stops.
"We wanted to play the change of
light on his face," says Medencevic.
"When we first see him, his key light
is a 12K HMI, completely flagged. As
it stops raining and the sun comes
out, I removed the flag to create the
subtle effect of Isak coming to light."
At night, Isak finds refuge in
the attic, where he sets up candles
and performs rituals. "I wanted this
secret spot to be the warmest place

the

[in the film],

so

soft

that

sources

I used candles and
were

gelled with double CTO.
14

May 2005

a

Moviecam

sometimes

Muscos,

so

Medencevic decided to

spotlight atop the camp's
prison-like tower, but he wanted to
start the scene with a very stylized
image. Although there is a spotlight
on the
boys, the area behind them is
completely black. "You don't really
know what's going on," Medencevic
explains. "As the hours pass and the
sky starts to brighten, you gradually
see the wall behind the
boys and you
know they're in the compound."
In some scenes, the spotlight
rakes across the courtyard. The
production found an actual search¬
light in Bulgaria, but there was no
way to get it onto the roof of the
use

a

tower.

ted

Instead, Medencevic retrofit¬

4K HMI,

removing its lens and
placing it inside a barrel. "I hoped it
would flare enough so you could
never
really see the light source, but if
you look carefully, you can see it."
In the DI suite at Digital Film
Lab in Copenhagen, Medencevic
a

"locked into the looks

we

wanted

-

day,

night, candlelight, winter,
summer, past, present. We then tran¬
sitioned from
from cold

one

to warm,

look

to another,
from heightened

reality to sepia, from present day to
1945." He praises colorist Demetri
Kitsopoulos and Digital Film Lab
president Kris Kolodzieski, noting,
"Kris is both a pioneer of the DI and
a
cinematographer by training, and
he and his team gave us maximum
support at the most important
moment

for the look of the film." ■
American Cinematographer - May 2005

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