American Cinematographer - April 2011 - 34

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Wicked World

Left: Küchler eyeballs a location in Morocco. Above: Enchanted by her mysterious new chum, Sophie (Jessica Barden) offers Hanna a friendship bracelet.

interrogated by her captors in a room equipped with video cameras. The live feed is monitored by agents in the control room and by Marissa, who is observing from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. In the walls of the interrogation room, the filmmakers positioned seven Sony PMW-350s to capture different perspectives of Hanna and her questioners. “The whole scene feels like an alien abduction,” says Küchler, “and, in fact, the room we used for the shots of Marissa looks a bit like a spaceship. This is the polar opposite of what Hanna has experienced in the first 15 years of her life. She’s trapped in a tiny space and studied like a medical experiment. All the lighting is artificial, the cameras are static, and we introduce a grainy, digital look.” To underscore Hanna’s feelings of alienation, Küchler had his crew mount four practicals — 24-watt Osram Utube Dulux 840s — on the wall at about head height “so we always had a light flaring into the lens,” he says. All of these were on a dimmer. For keylight, a 24K Dino gelled with ½ CTB and ¼ Plus Green and going through 3⁄4 Grid
34 April 2011

was rigged overhead, and a 7'-wide ring was hung below it. “We used pulleys to move the ring up and down to separate the walls and eventually keep them darker,” says Nickel.

“What helped keep me going were all the interesting challenges Joe threw my way.”

“I liked the idea of the keylight coming from an unnatural angle and creating deep shadows around the actors’ eyes,” adds Küchler. In a surprise move, Hanna overtakes her captors and escapes, eventually finding her way to a long tunnel that runs beneath the CIA complex. The
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filmmakers used a functional wind tunnel for these scenes, and because they were forbidden from drilling holes in the concrete walls, they created an emergency-light effect by placing 30-40 Martin Atomic 3Ks in housings designed by the art department and controlling the fixtures through a dimmer board. For a particular shot in this sequence, Ronan ran on a treadmill in the tunnel while the Arri Lite on a dolly with a rollover rig captured the action. Hanna emerges from the tunnel to find herself in the Moroccan desert, where she falls into step with a young English tourist, Sophie ( Jessica Barden), and her family. Upon arriving in the nearest town, Hanna is bedazzled by the modern world, embodied by the small hotel where she secures a room. She is fascinated by the electric lights and appliances, and frightened by the small television set. For this scene, which was shot on location, Küchler introduced a green spike in the film’s palette to suggest the modern industrialized world. “We wanted to sharply contrast the artificial light with the light

American Cinematographer - April 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2011