American Cinematographer - May 2018 - 22

SHORT TAKES

Young Love
By Lauretta Prevost

Pushed by the school administration to complete the Level 1
Sexuality Requirement and "pop" the Electronic Emotional Remote
Monitoring Collar around his neck - as part of the No Child Left
Alone program - Wyrm (Reid Miller) is under school-mandated pressure to experience his first kiss. His twin sister, Myrcella (Azure Brandi),
has just had her qualifying experience with a student from Norway,
and having thus surpassed Wyrm, she asks that he move out of their
shared bedroom so she can have privacy and more room for her
personal items.
Rich with '90s nostalgia, the short Wyrm uses striking colors,
lighting and imagery to create a sensory world as seen through
memory, playing with how particular details may be experienced more
vividly from a subjective standpoint. For cinematographer Heyjin Jun,
the task was to bring director Christopher Winterbauer's own unique
memories of the '90s - as well as a generalized terror of falling
behind - to life. Jun came to the project from a background in documentary and small narrative projects. The short has had an impressive
festival run, including entry into the U.S. Narrative Short Films competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Growing up in rural South Korea, Jun was rarely able to watch
movies or television. It wasn't until she came to the United States at
age 21 that she was exposed to significant moving-image media. "I
was shocked," she reflects. "I saw all these films that influenced society to make it better. I watched the documentary Dark Days and real22

May 2018

ized the political power and social change that one film could generate." Jun studied film at UCLA and went on to earn an MFA degree
at USC, where she specialized in cinematography - and also met
Winterbauer and producer Faissal Sam Shaib.
Winterbauer had initially felt Jun's work was a bit more naturalistic than he envisioned for this particular project, but then he saw
a class exercise she had shot and was hooked. "It was almost exactly
what I was looking for in Wyrm," he says. "It looked incredible. Jun's
personality, disposition and collaborative spirit are what I wanted on
set. Jun's the most talented cinematographer in our program."
Jun's camerawork - and lack of it, when the situation
required - often adds to the project's humor as Wyrm leaves characters in static frames. "The humor comes from the long pauses and
awkward timing," Winterbauer says. "The characters don't know
they're funny. They are very serious people dealing with very serious
things.
"We wanted to use wide framing to heighten the isolation of
characters," Winterbauer adds, "and to oscillate between feeling like
you are at a distance from everything and feeling incredibly close. For
me, it always comes down to framing." Jun adds that when you see
a picture from a childhood photo album, "it is motionless, trapped in
a static frame."
For scenes featuring awkward moments, the filmmakers
went with single-point perspective - a bit along the lines of Wes
Anderson's work - and for more emotional sequences, they would
veer closer to conventional coverage. A decision was also made to
always keep the camera below the eyeline of the young actors, so

American Cinematographer

Behind-the-scenes photos by Faissal Sam Shaib. All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

The
eponymous
lead (Reid
Miller) of the
short Wyrm
has to wear
an Electronic
Emotional
Remote
Monitoring
Collar until he
manages to
procure his
first kiss.

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