American Cinematographer - July 2013 - 16

Above: Samir’s
soccer ball is
important
because it is the
only one his
team has, but
hanging onto it
proves difficult.
Right: Barron
stands behind
Volkova as they
discuss a shot
on set.

stays with his POV. The presence of a soldier
is revealed when Samir, crouched in a
corner, catches the sight of boots approaching. Barron lit this scene by bouncing 5Ks
and 10Ks into 12'x12' UnltraBounce.
The filmmakers chose to frame in
1.85:1 to emphasize the intimate perspec16

July 2013

tive. “Alla and I considered widescreen, but
we never really wanted it to be about the
setting,” says the cinematographer. “I think
2.40 works really well when the location is
a character, when you have multiple characters, or when you want to play with
imbalanced frames, but all we really wanted
American Cinematographer

to do was be with the kid. Alla has a real
knack for children’s stories.”
Dreamland was Barron’s second
collaboration with Volkova, who was a
classmate at the American Film Institute.
They first worked together on the 16mm
short Clown, made during their first year at
AFI. “We got along quite well,” Barron
recalls. “Also, we’re both Russian, so it was
nice to work with someone from the Motherland!”
Volkova prefers to storyboard the
entire film before shooting, which suits
Barron fine. “She had it all drawn out, and
she’s very good at drawing. When you look
at one of her storyboards, you can immediately get the idea.”
One of Dreamland’s most striking
images comes at the end. Having retrieved
his ball from the building — after finding
help to mend a puncture — Samir finally
reaches a field surrounded by hills where his
friends are playing. The camera, which is
following the boy from behind, starts to
hang back as he approaches the hill. There
is a cut to a close-up as a smile comes across
Samir’s face, and then a wide shot as he
runs down the hill to join the game. Up to
this point, Barron observes, the film’s
settings comprise “confined spaces or
crowds. It was always a journey towards this
dreamland, essentially. We wanted to finally
introduce a primary color, green, when he
gets there, and also for the first time breathe
and step back with him. All around them
war is going on, but these kids are just being
kids.” The film lingers on this sight before
fading to black.
The production lasted six days: two
in downtown Los Angeles, where the interiors were shot, and four at Blue Cloud Ranch
in Santa Clarita, Calif., which stood in for
Iraq. “There were a few standing sets that
we redressed,” Barron says. Before production began, she studied the light at the
ranch. “I made plenty of trips up to Santa
Clarita, and I just sat there watching how
the sun moves. We were lucky, in that we
had a couple of overcast days on our shoot.
In fact, when we shot most of the dialogue,
it was overcast, and when we were going
through all of the chaos, the sun sort of
peered out. It was easy to balance it out in
the color correction.”
On set, Barron relied on a waveform
American Cinematographer - July 2013

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