ANNA
A look into the daily rituals of a girl named Anna.
Production Design
The production design focused very much on the colour composition and how that reflected the mental state of Anna. We strived to create unique colour areas which followed a monochromatic palette – different nuances of the same colour. This sounds easy on paper, but in reality it was quite tough to achieve
Camera rig
During the early stages of the pre-production, the d.o.p Boris and I started to do camera tests. The key test was getting the speed of the zooming in just right. At that point we were thinking of creating our own zooming motorised rig as we had a spare motor. The motor was for focusing and so when we put it to a very low speed of rotation it would start to lagg and the zooming would be jumpy. We used a flexible zoom ring which we kept making bigger and bigger in order to achieve a longer and smoother zoom by speeding up the motor. Eventually we found the sweet spot and managed to do our tests just right. For the actual shooting, we decided that our shitty rig was just not safe enough and we ended up renting proper gear. The professional set up allowed to change speed and easily go back to previous set ones, which in turn help out with options in the editing room.
The nature of zooming
Zooming is a tool that is not often seen in modern cinema. It is usually linked with low-budget tv films or used for comedic effect – the snap zoom.
For Anna, I really wanted to try and create an atmosphere which despite it’s pleasant production design, carried a sense of something not being quite right. The ”focusing” which the zoom creates forces the audience to look at the frame and it’s centre. The lack of any clear explanation as to why we are looking at this, should create a sense of unease – for we fear that which is unknown. The other point of the zoom is that it literally closes onto the image making it quite small and constrained. We see less and less of hew world. When she opens the door, the zooming is reversed and this time the world in the frame starts to expand and create a drastic contrast with Anna’s interior safe space.
Digital bolex
We decided to film Anna with a Digital Bolex camera which has a Super16 sensor and shoots RAW. The biggest advantage to shooting with the D16 is the colour fidelity and rich skin tones, this is mainly because it has a CCD sensor instead of the usual CMOS sensor. This was an important aspect of how we managed to achieve the colours we wanted. Despite that it was a bit of a gamble shooting on the Digital Bolex. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt after selling 2,000 pcs. They stopped updating the software and brought the technical team down to a minimum. If something would have happened to the camera during the shoot it would have been tricky to solve and fix. Fortunately, everything panned out and I think we did the right thing sticking with the Digital Bolex.
The camera was conceived after a very successful kickstarter campaign, in which the team sourced 260K$ of the original 100K$ target in less than 20 days, due to it’s popularity with the people. This is the first cinema camera to be funded this way.
