American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K11

We didn’t change anything
about her actual training,
except the background.”

Road to London is a visual
poem that highlights the
lyrical beauty of high-level
gymnastics, and the ﬁerce
dedication required of an
OLYMPIC athlete. Goksu
Uctas started learning
gymnastics at age 5, and at
age 6, she moved to a city in
western Turkey to continue.
She spent years training twice
a day, and endured a series of
injuries, including a dislocated
elbow and a painful neck
hernia. Not to be deterred,
Uctas persevered and became
the ﬁrst athlete in history to
represent Turkey in the ﬁeld
of artistic gymnastics at the
OLYMPICS. She competed at
the 2012 OLYMPIC Games in
London. Despite her heroic
story, she is not especially
well known in her country.
Director Efe Oztezdogan
enlisted cinematographer
Meryem Yavuz to help
document Uctas’s training
regimen. Yavuz studied at the
Turkish National Film School,
and has shot several features
and more than 50 short ﬁlms
over the past seven years. She
has also worked as a loader
and electrician on bigger
international co-productions.

“I prefer to shoot ﬁlm
when possible,” says Yavuz.
“Film was deﬁnitely the right
medium for Road to London.
Also, the ﬁlm postproduction
path is well established
in Turkey, whereas
digital workﬂows are less
dependable.”
To prepare for Road to
London, the ﬁlmmakers
studied iconic sports
documentaries like
director Kon Ichikawa’s
Tokyo Olympiad (1965).
They planned their project
carefully, because Uctas
could not perform limitless
takes. They spent a generous
amount of time getting to
know the athlete.
“You can feel her aura
when you enter the room,”
says producer Cem
Doruk. “She has
a strong will.

More than 1,000 square
yards of black cloth were hung
around the training to isolate
Uctas against black as she
performed her routines on the
uneven parallel bars and other
equipment at the gym. Each
shot and angle was planned
out ahead of time to minimize
wasted takes.
Yavuz shot with two ARRI
435 cameras loaded with
KODAK VISION3 500T
Color Negative Film 5219, and
equipped with MASTER PRIME
lenses. Once the decision was
made to render black-andwhite images, Yavuz felt free
to light with daylight-balanced
light — usually a single 6K
lamp, perfectly placed —
which rendered a subtly
different quality of light that
she preferred over light from a
tungsten lamp.

Slow motion was also a key
aspect of the cinematography.
The over-cranked images slow
the gymnast’s movements and
emphasize her grace, power
and beauty. One camera
was usually running at 25
frames per second, a rate
that works well with the post
infrastructure in Turkey. The
second camera was mounted
on a JIMMY JIB, a small crane,
and ran at 150 frames per
second. About 30 100-foot
rolls of ﬁlm were exposed.
After a 2K transfer, the
color was drained from the
images digitally. Film prints
and DCPs were made.
Representatives of one of
the largest theater chains
in Turkey saw the ﬁlm and
were sufﬁciently impressed
to show it before the main
feature in their theaters
all across Turkey. Road to
London was also screened at
the 2012 Plus Camerimage
International Festival of the
Art of Cinematography in a
special category devoted to
documentaries on sports,
gaining the ﬁlmmakers
positive notice and
international exposure.
“We plan to make more
ﬁlms about amateur athletes,”
says Doruk. “We hope to make
longer ﬁlms that examine the
personalities of the athletes.“
Photos – Courtesy of Cem Doruk
American Cinematographer - April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2013
