THE INNOCENTS•STURLA BRANDTH GRØVLEN DFF
STURLA BRANDTH GRØVLEN DFF •THE INNOCENTS
PLAYGROUND SHOWDOWN
By Ron Prince
It was clear this story was to be told within a different frame of reality – from inside the bubble of childhood BTS photos by Aslak Lytthans and Tor Edvin Eliassen. Movie stills courtesy of Signature Entertainment.
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o cats were harmed or traumatised during the making of this film,” says DP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen DFF reassuringly, during our interview about his work on Norwegian director Eskil Vogt’s acclaimed, supernatural thriller, The Innocents, (De Uskyldige), which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard section, before releasing in mid-May 2022. The unnerving feature is set during a bright Nordic summer, where a group of children explore their mysterious, telekinetic and telepathic powers, when the adults aren’t around. The film’s primary point-of-view is that of nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum), who finds herself adrift after moving to an out-of-town, high-rise housing complex, with her parents and older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), who has severe autism. Whilst Anna appears to be psychically connected to Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), a young girl with vitiligo who can hear the thoughts of other people, in the playground, Ida makes cautious friends with Ben (Sam Ashraf), an isolated only-child just a little older than
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herself, who can fling rocks and explode tree trunks just by using his mind. At first, Ida finds Ben’s paranormal abilities decidedly cool, but becomes less enamoured by his increasingly sadistic impulses towards neighbourhood cats and the torturous violence he inflicts upon other youngsters who live in the area. The four children interact in nice and naughty ways, until playtime takes a much darker turn.
Super Baltars offer a pleasing synergy with digital sensors “Even though The Innocents is presented as a horror, and needed to incorporate elements of sinister scariness, from a cinematographic point-of-view I read it more as an observation about how children experience and explore the world around themselves, how they learn and grow, how they shape their own sense morality and mortality,” says Grøvlen, a Norwegian DP, who lives and works in Denmark, and who shot The Innocents back-to-back after completing principal photography Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (2020). “Eskil’s story was inspired by his own experiences of parenting, and it was clear from his script, that it was to be told within a different frame of reality – from inside the bubble of childhood that adults don’t have access to, where the kids play games in a fantasy world, and those games and fantasies are real to them. “During our early discussions, Eskil said that said if a dragon landed in the back yard, the adults would be wondering what the hell was going on, yet the children would probably find it quite normal or cool. For them, telekinetic abilities are just fun and games.” Of course, there are countless examples of movies about kids with supernatural powers that the filmmakers could have considered in terms of references, but Grøvlen says the visual inspiration to help get into the mindset for shooting The Innocents came from less
obvious sources. “We were more inspired by the depiction of fantastical and paranormal events in Japanese Sundome manga comic books, and the super-powers of the characters in animated films like Akira (1988, dir. Katsuhiro Otomo), than other movies. “And, as we discussed our visual treatment for The Innocents, the German word ‘unheimlich’ – which means uncanny or weird – kept coming-up with regard to how we could play with the camera point-of-view to evoke appropriate sensations and tensions – such as combining wide panoramas and strong close-ups.” The Innocents was shot over the course of nine weeks, during the summer of 2019, around the housing estate of Romsås, near Oslo, Norway, and its surrounding woodlands. Grøvlen says with the restrictions that apply to children’s working hours on-set, that scheduling became quite a puzzle. Bearing in mind the need to immerse the audience in the world of the children – to shoot from their eyelines and to evoke the uncanny – Grøvlen went with an ARRI Alexa Mini, to assist manoeuvrabilty, shooting at 800ISO.
“I shoot a lot of handheld, although my style is more about having the camera at foot, knee and hip level, or even above my head, than on the shoulder,” Grøvlen explains. “I have invented a set-up with the Alexa Mini that works well for me, with the batteries on my belt to minimise weight, which allows me to be very agile and to move freely. This approach was very much part of depicting the world from the children’s viewpoints, although we also went with more formal and composed cinematography from the dolly and on sticks.” As for the optics, Grøvlen selected vintage, Super Baltar spherical prime lenses, rehoused by P+S Technik, and a Canon K35 25-120mm zoom. The camera and lens package was supplied by Kamerarental in Oslo, which also has branches in Denmark and Sweden. First introduced by Bausch & Lomb in the mid1960s, Super Baltar lenses were originally designed to be compatible with Mitchell BNCR cameras and are best known for their use on The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974) (both shot by DP Gordon Willis ASC). Manufactured in the 1970s, the Canon K35 25-120mm zoom offers similar colour rendition, flare and fall-off characteristics to the Baltars, plus an inbuilt macro function that can bring focus to 2-inches at 25mm. “Whilst the Super Baltars are well-suited to analogue film, their warm, soft look and unique flares offer a pleasing synergy with the sensors on digital cinema cameras,” says the DP. “We tested a quite a few different lenses, but Eskil responded most to the creamy softness of the image and the sometimes weird chromatic aberrations that the Super Baltars give. As the Super Baltars closest focus is about threefeet, we used diopters to magnify the image for our close-ups. “The K35 zoom is a visual good match with the Baltars, and allowed me to bring different feelings of tension, otherworldliness and estrangement to the image by using slow zoom-ins and contra-zooms off the dolly. Additionally, the macro function enabled me to focus-in really closely, with shallow depth-of-field, on evocative childhood experiences – like the Velcro straps
trainers, a finger picking at a scab, or fingers bursting bubblewrap. “The looks of these lenses, combined with different ways we moved the camera – slow push-ins, sudden look-ups, over-the shoulder reveals, and panoramic drone shots that were later flipped upside-down in post – were all ways of creating sensations of menace, horror and the supernatural.” Rather than adopt lighting conventions from horror films, Grøvlen says the strategy went the other way, and was more about keeping the look contemporary and natural overall, with a sense of magical realism through lighting design. “On our exteriors, we barely used any artificial lighting to illuminate our scenes. It was more about controlling the natural/available light, often with butterflies, and using negative fill to shape the look on faces. However, this was sometimes quite a challenge in terms of continuity, such as on the final ‘battle-of-thewills’ scene at the lake, which we shot over three days in variable weather conditions. “As for the interiors, I wanted to work with reflected light, not just bouncing softlight into a room or other location using HMIs, but also creating light patterns on the walls, adding subtle highlights here and there to create a sense of magicality. I worked with my regular gaffer, Aslak Lytthans, who was very hands-on and creative in suggesting the use of mirrors, crystals and hard spots that we could use for these soft of effects which you can see throughout the film.” Grøvlen attended the final grade on The Innocents, which took place at Copenhagen post-house Zentropa under the auspices of Swedish colourist Emil Eriksson. “The fact that I had recently completed the DI on Another Round with Emil made things easier,” remarks the DP. “He proved what a talented and skilled colourist he is in ironing-out little inconsistencies, say with skin tones, and more problematic issues concerning the weather. “I also have to say that, during the DI was the first time I saw the film with Pessi Levanto’s score and
sound design/mix by Gisle Tveito and Gustaf Berger. I was blown away by how much the music and audio effects added to the haunting tension and atmospheric experience of the movie.” Indeed, Tveito and Berger were awarded for their work at the 2021 European Film Awards. Grøvlen concludes, “I am pretty critical of my work, and don’t particularly enjoy looking back at films I have shot, as I can always see something I would have done differently or better. But, The Innocents does rank pretty high as a personal favourite. “I had a really good collaboration with Eskil and my crew, and those great connections and friendships made things easier during the shoot. I was able to bring more range and scope into my work, in terms of combining handheld with more deliberate positional shots, and I feel we succeeded in creating children’s experiences. I am very happy with the lighting too, and how we nailed the Nordic light for dramatic effect. I am very proud of the result and think it’s an amazing film.”
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