American Cinematographer - May 2021 - 46

OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

Tech Specs:

1.78:1
Camera: Canon EOS C100 Mark II
Lenses: Canon EF still lenses

Director-cinematographer Radu Ciorniciuc (middle) and co-cinematographer
Mircea Topoleanu (bottom) document the journey of the Enache family.

the screenplay. We had no soundperson and no
electricians. This was primarily a one-camera
shoot; either Mircea or I operated. " In addition
to Topoleanu and Vdovii, Ciorniciuc praises the
contributions of editor Andrei Gorgan and producer Monica Lazurean-Gorgan.
It didn't take long for the children to get
comfortable with the new face when Topoleanu came aboard. Says the co-cinematographer,
" That's because Radu told them, 'This is my
friend. I trust him.' Because they saw Radu and
me with the camera every day, it became invisible to them. They were oblivious to it. "
Ciorniciuc laughs as he recalls that early
on, the kids would intentionally look into
the camera as a joke. " That ended when their
mother found some discarded Jean-Claude Van
Damme DVDs in a city dumpster. People from
the city had given the family an old TV monitor and a used generator that worked intermittently. The kids went crazy over the videos! The
next time they teasingly looked into the camera, I said, 'Hey, have you ever seen Jean-Claude
Van Damme looking into the camera?' And they
said, 'Man, you're right!' and stopped doing it. "
One of Topoleanu's favorite shots is a night
scene of Vali fishing from the boat, with a flash-

back. Higher and higher it climbs - incorporating three dissolves - until the entire delta
is exposed. The drone turns and the city of Bucharest comes into view, with the abandoned
reservoir serving as a demarcation line. It's a
visual that brings the whole of the narrative
into perspective.
" At first I didn't want to use a drone, but it
proved to be the most elegant solution, " Ciorniciuc says. " The shot is six minutes long, and
we had to push the drone as high as possible to
[include both the city and the delta]. It's the first
time the audience sees how big and diverse the
park is, as well as its proximity to the city. "
After two years of bureaucratic delays, the
family was finally forced to move into the city.
They were provided with a small apartment,
and the children were enrolled in school for
the first time. The shock that the displacement
instilled in the family filtered down to the filmmakers. " The first time I saw them in the apartment, I felt that the story was running away
from me, " he says. " My fascination with their
relationship to nature was gone. We had to regroup and think hard about how we were going
to move forward. "
One option was to simply end the movie

" When you have felt what abuse of power feels like on your own
skin, it creates a desire to contribute to the world around you. "
light wrapped around his forehead to provide
illumination amid rainfall. " Radu and I were in
a second boat alongside him. Radu was paddling, keeping the boat as steady as possible. I
used a monopod with [a Canon C100 Mark II
paired with a Canon 50mm still lens]. The shot
ends on a profile of Vali's face. He has a lost,
even haunted expression, as if he knew something was a bit off with his life. He had total
responsibility for catching fish and taking care
of his younger siblings - his father, Gica, suffered from untreated diabetes. There was a lot
of pressure on him. He seemed to sense that his
life was different from that of a normal, carefree 15-year-old. "
A particularly striking sequence in the movie
opens on the kids playing soccer outside their
hut. The camera, a drone, starts to slowly pull

when the family left the delta, " but the younger
children's enthusiasm for school, their classmates, and the whole new universe they were
discovering made us keep going, " Ciorniciuc
says. It was much more difficult for Vali and
Nica, three years his junior. Vali was bullied by
his peers and increasingly mistreated by his
father, who was angry he was losing his hold
over the family, and Nica deeply missed the
comfort and sense of security he had known in
the delta.
" We wanted a different visual approach in
the city - one that was more formal, " says Ciorniciuc, who notes that the main shift in shooting style was locking down the camera. " We put
the camera on a tripod. There's a scene in the
classroom when the younger kids are giving
their names to their new teacher. In the back

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American Cinematographer - May 2021

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