American Cinematographer - March 2013 - 20

Production Slate

A Teen View of Zealotry
By Jean Oppenheimer

“History is written by the victors,” proclaimed Winston
Churchill, but the Australian production Lore, set at the end of World
War II, is told from a very different perspective: that of a German
teenager, Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), whose family is committed to the
Nazi cause. Directed by Cate Shortland and shot by Adam Arkapaw,
the film was Australia’s submission for the 2012 Academy Award for
Best Foreign-Language Feature.
Lore begins in May 1945 as Lore’s parents, an SS officer and
his equally zealous wife, learn of Hitler’s suicide. Knowing they will be
arrested, they direct Lore to gather her four younger siblings and take
a train to Hamburg, where their grandmother lives. But the trains
have stopped running, and the children must walk the 300 miles to
their destination. For part of their journey, they are joined by a mysterious young man (Kai Malina) who carries papers that identify him as
a Jew.
Lore was adapted from Rachel Seiffert’s book The Dark Room,
which was based on her grandmother’s experiences during the war.
Arkapaw notes that the screenplay presented “an interesting mixed
point of view. There is an emphasis on the children’s perspective, but
there is also an omnipresent one, that of an older person recalling a
traumatic period in her life.” He and Shortland decided to shoot on
Super 16mm “to give the images a kind of nostalgic feeling,” he
adds.
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March 2013

Lore is filled with close-ups and extreme close-ups, usually of
the children or of nature: a part of a face, a bit of somebody’s shoulder, a hand caressing a leaf. Other shots have an impressionistic,
dreamlike quality, as when Lore’s sister Liesel (Nele Trebs) is skipping
rope, or the twins, Gunter and Jurgen (Andre Frid and Mika Seidel),
are chasing one another through the woods. “Filming in this
manner was our way of conveying the fragmentation of memory,”
says Arkapaw.
“By using Zeiss Ultra 16 lenses, which have a great minimum
focus, it was easy to get into very detailed work,” he continues.
“We liked the softness of the shallow focus; it was like how a
memory might not be crystal clear but, rather, seen through a thin
veil of time.”
Arkapaw operated the main camera, an Arri 416. When a
second camera was needed, 1st AC Luke Thomas operated an Arri
16-SR3 Advanced. In addition to the prime lenses, Arkapaw used a
Canon 11:1 11.5-138mm zoom. He favored the primes, however,
especially the 25mm and 35mm. “Those focal lengths are closest to
how the human eye sees the world, so we felt they would provide
a more ‘human’ experience for the audience. The 25mm is also the
most versatile, allowing you to shoot wide shots and close-ups on
the same lens.” Arkapaw was especially happy with the 416’s new
eyepiece, which “makes both lighting and finding focus a heap
easier than earlier models.”
Although the story deals with one of humanity’s darkest
hours, its focus is children, and Shortland didn’t want the picture to

American Cinematographer

Photos by Vanessa Fuentes. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Music Box Films.

The camera
maintains an
intimate
relationship with
14-year-old Lore
(played by
Saskia
Rosendahl)
throughout
much of Lore,
shot by Adam
Arkapaw and
directed by Cate
Shortland.

American Cinematographer - March 2013

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