American Cinematographer - March 2015 - 14

Short Takes

Dancing in Dystopia
By Noah Kadner

Clocking in at more than six minutes in length, Scottish musician Paolo Nutini's song "Iron Sky" explores themes of oppression
and individual uprising, and incorporates an impassioned dialogue
sample from Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator. Its music video
- which adds another two minutes to the runtime - complements
the song with visuals of a dystopian society of addicts and victims of
trauma who find intermittent relief through drugs and dancing.
Shot in and around Kiev, Ukraine, the video was directed by
brothers Daniel and Matthew Wolfe and photographed by Robbie
Ryan, BSC. "I've worked with Daniel and Matthew quite a bit," says
Ryan. "We recently did a feature together called Catch Me Daddy.
As a starting point, Daniel tends to put together a bible - with the
help of production partner Alex Hulsey - with a huge list of locations and scenarios he'd like to film, and he does a lot of on-thestreet casting. For "Iron Sky," their idea was this hive-mind sciencefiction concept with a priority on local characters. Paolo was happy
to give Daniel a lot of freedom to run with the concept."
The video is predominantly handheld, and Ryan opted to
shoot in the 2-perf 35mm format with an Arriflex 235 camera. "I
prefer shooting film [rather than] digital," the cinematographer
explains. "[With digital] you know everything you're going to get is
right there on the monitor, whereas a film image always improves
from what you first see on the video assist.
"The 235 is a lovely camera that's simple, lightweight and
very sturdy," he continues. "Ironically, our camera did break at the
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March 2015

end of the first day, but [2nd-unit cinematographer] Deepa Keshvala
and I eventually figured out what was broken and fixed it ourselves.
That was a bit of a nervous time - if we hadn't been able to [fix
the camera], we wouldn't have been able to shoot 2-perf, and the
producer, Lee Groombridge, would have needed to spend a lot
more of our limited budget on additional film stock."
Speaking to the 2-perf format's native 2.40:1 aspect ratio,
Ryan says, "Daniel really likes it, because what you see is what you
get, and you can't really change or re-frame the shots in postproduction. I [also] like that you're setting the final image as you shoot
- it's living life more on the edge."
For his shooting stocks, Ryan secured a variety of 35mm
short ends from a number of different sources, including a local
vendor in Kiev. "It was mainly Kodak Vision3 200T 5213 and 500T
5219, with a tiny bit of 50D 5203," the cinematographer details.
"We also shot some Fuji [Eterna] Vivid 160 tungsten, as I'm a
massive fan of Fuji stock. Some of the Kodak stock we got was up
to eight years old and hadn't even been strip tested, but it had an
interesting texture and grain, and Daniel really liked its look."
Ryan paired the 235 with Arri/Zeiss Master Prime T1.3 lenses.
"I'm really fond of Master Primes, which work great for film
cameras," says Ryan. "Daniel shoots quite wide, and so we stayed
mostly on the 21mm. Sometimes we'd go a little wider at 18mm.
That practice didn't really change a lot over the different shooting
days. We'd decide on the shot and move the camera, and we didn't
repeat takes much. That's the way Daniel likes to work, and as a
result, he gets higher-quality footage and a greater diversity of
imagery. He gets the feel of a scene and then we move on." ➣

American Cinematographer

Photos by Alex Hulsey, courtesy of the filmmakers.

Cinematographer Robbie Ryan, BSC and directors Daniel and Matthew Wolfe shot in and
around Kiev, Ukraine for the music video for Paolo Nutini's "Iron Sky."

American Cinematographer - March 2015

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