Tudor Vladimir Panduru, RSC, speaks about his work on "Fjord", by Cristian Mungiu

The Gheorghius, a devout Romanian Norwegian couple, resettle in a village set in a distant fjord where they become close to their neighbours, the Halbergs. Their children bond despite their different education. When adolescent Elia Gheorghiu shows up at school with some bruises on her body, the community asks itself if the traditional education that the Gheorghiu children get from their parents might have anything to do with it.

You’ve been working with Cristian Mungiu for over ten years.

Tudor Vladimir Panduru : Yes. I was already on the set of Beyond the Hills, back in 2012, as an assistant of Oleg Mutu, who was Mungiu’s previous DoP. At one point I got the chance to step up, and after shooting commercials together, I photographed the feature film Graduation, in 2016. Due to international coproduction, my being cinematographer of Fjord wasn’t a given, and I’m very grateful that I got to do it and work with such great actors as Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, and all this great cast : it’s a once of a lifetime experience !

The location is key, as stated by the very title of the film.

TVP : Yes. The story is based on true events that took place in Norway, in multiple similar cases. It’s not a “Romanian in Norway” phenomenon, it also happened with Polish families. They had a strict way of dealing with child protection, knowing that between the moment Cristian started his research and the shoot the law had changed, as he said during the press conference. From what I understand, Norway has many small, remote communities that are socially aware of each other. I assume it’s a reason for this attitude which can translate as somehow overprotective. It comes from a good place, but the outcome is wrong. This duality is very interesting, and we tried to play it on a visual level. It was a long process. We spent a lot of time scouting the place and meeting people. Cristian first, and then me, gathered enough information not to place this story in a weird light, if that makes sense. The film is built from a realistic perspective while preserving ambiguity around motivations. We tried not to take sides, wanting instead to respect each character’s point of view and explore the tensions within their dynamic. The choice of location has an important role in the narrative. The visual language is inspired by real locations and reality itself rather than cinematic references. We found the houses first : their vicinity was important to the story, not only so that you understand why the neighbours know each other’s names, but also from the camera perspective. The houses had to be filmed in the same shot, and the placement of windows also mattered.

Windows and doors are paramount ! Even for the interior scenes, it’s like the location is looking at the events unfolding through all the openings.

TVP : I learned very soon that this depth is something Cristian likes. From The Graduation on, he always likes to see the outside. A window in frame cannot be blown out. In several scenes the sun came out during the shot and hit the background ; with the light meter sometimes giving me T128 ! I had brought in all the light we had at hand to try and balance the interior and the exterior. I was afraid it would strobe on the big screen, but the Arri Alexa 35 handled the highlights beyond expectations, and in the end, you don’t even notice the sun coming out during the shots. I like to keep that consistency of exposure throughout the film, if there’s something on which I work hard it’s that, keeping everything in control so that I can adjust the contrast in postproduction. Cristian is 100% focused on performance, and we don’t always have the luxury of choosing the right time of day for the light, which can sometimes be painful ! Natural light was prioritized, though some blue-hour scenes were recreated to deal with the extreme weather changes in Norway. There were so many logistical issues we had to deal with, like when the roads got blocked by an avalanche and we had to get to the location by boat. The word that would define our shoot the best is “flexibility”. We went to Norway to get snow, but we had to wait for it and switch the schedule accordingly.

When and how long did you shoot ?

TVP : From the end of February to the first part of April. As a result, we had less daylight time, but the story spanned three seasons, and it was the only way to catch a bit of each. The last day of shooting was the scene with the jump in the water, which we postponed as to have warmer water. The different locations were close to each other, the school being a bit further away, but we still had to take ferries and coordinate everything around their schedules.

How did you light interiors ?

TVP : We shot multiple long shots, oners and even 360°s, so there’s no possibility of putting any stands : either you light from the shot or from above, or you try to light from outside, in all directions and hiding the source. In terms of angle and direction of the light, you aren’t always at the most photogenic spot, and I had to make compromises, but I tried to embed these as part of the language of the film. We would push light in from above the windows, with a bigger source (mostly Vortexes on cherry pickers) from far away, or with closer soft lights placed above the windows. I try to light the place first : once the space is consistent and you get the right atmosphere, you can light the faces from inside. Once the blocking is set, I try to enhance the volumes according to where the action takes place. I sometimes placed the faces on the toe of the curve, although there are some high key set ups : with the snow in shot I would keep the lights up, just to be able to see the faces. Cristian shoots a lot of takes ; that’s the other thing. Some scenes can be as long as eight pages of dialogue, and you cannot put pressure on the actors, you have to be supportive in any way possible, and it happens that the lighting isn’t the best on the take that makes the edit, even if there are unplanned miracles happening in front of the camera when things are synchronized ! But it’s a general case with long takes. It’s about living the moment and trying to be humble by not being a control freak.

Talking about control, how precisely do you know in advance what you’re going to shoot ?

TVP : For some things, we know exactly how we’re going to shoot. We had a longer prep thanks to finding the locations early on, so Cristian and I would go on location and rehearse the shots with him playing the characters and trying to find the best mise en scene. After working for so long together, I understand his language of long shots. Scenes are staged around master shots, with careful variation in framing and rhythm, avoiding repetitive visual information. The camera is mostly handheld and “breathes” with the action, remaining restrained and naturalistic rather than overly controlled or stylized. There are things we had never done before, like jumping in (and walking on) the water, but otherwise, we know the style we’re aiming at.

Can you tell me how you achieved the shots in the courtroom, with this huge bay window that takes up a whole wall ?

TVP : I was lucky… We had our sources on a cherry picker to push light in as the key light. The windows already had a “internal ND” from the way they were conceived, so that on a cloudy day, the contrast ratio was quite good ; it was harder to control on a sunny day. Also, since it’s a real, working courtroom, we could only shoot on specific time slots. I couldn’t change anything in the built-in light fixtures, so I had to accept them and basically emulate their warm light, while not being able to put many sources inside because they would appear in the window reflection. Whatever was out of frame was all blacked out, otherwise the boom operator and myself would also appear in the reflection –and when I had the chance of not seeing the window in the shot, I would double the light coming from outside, with bouncing soft lights. For this oner of the trial, I’d say we filmed 15-20 takes, for maybe half a day. Once it’s set, it’s just the actors playing on and on, and hoping for the best on the technical side. I don’t worry too much about focus because I usually shoot at T4.5/5.6 (with some shots at 2.8).

You shot anamorphic.

TVP : Cristian loves to shoot with very wide lenses, but we don’t like the barrel effect you get on a 16mm or a 18mm spherical lens, so we shot on Master Anamorphics (like we did for The Graduation). They have an organic image quality, and you can fit a lot of faces in the frame without getting deformation, which matters for this kind of story with many characters and group scenes.

A word about the colours : blue nights and warm interiors. Is it because it’s what the location and the actual interiors look like ?

TVP : We have a philosophy of sticking to reality, even if it’s our interpretation. The grand Norwegian landscape adds emotional depth and atmosphere, with cold, metallic exteriors contrasted against warmer interiors to subtly differentiate emotional spaces and relationships.

From a chromatic perspective, we also tried to distinguish between the two families. In Norway, they have very warm lights in the houses, probably to keep this coziness when daylight is so sparse. Most of the lights are at 2,800K, which is basically orange. To try and keep a balance I went a bit higher, like 3,800K or 4,000K, because the blue outside was even bluer than expected, like 8,000K ! The place looks this much colourful, the houses are red, it’s an image that you can’t fight. The colour palette is cold and desaturated while preserving the brilliance of primary colours. Whites preserve texture, and each character subtly inhabits their own colour range. Blacks remain deep but always retain enough information so that details are visible even in the darkest areas. For the night scenes, I mostly worked on the toe of the curve, preserving as much detail as possible in the shadows. We also tried to maintain information in the sky for wider shots by shooting at dawn, sometimes with support from VFX (at Filmgate in Sweden) for sky replacement.

And what about the walking on water scene ? So far everyone has a different interpretation of its meaning, which is great !

TVP : I think Cristian likes to leave it to the viewer. To me, it’s about the leap of faith. It was a tricky one. We tested many ways to have the character walk on water. We wanted to show the ripple effect, but the feet shouldn’t be submerged so much, so we had to submerge a deck just below the surface and paint it black so that it’s invisible to the camera. Our prop master, Marius Bardasan, found a great solution : as an inspiration I showed him photos of decks immersed in, and he found a metal structure with perforations so that the water could submerge it, whilst being heavy enough for stabilization. It had tires ensuring buoyancy and it was rigged to the bottom to keep it straight. I walked on it, under the supervision of our great stunt and safety coordinator Kai Kolstad Rødseth, a couple of times, just for the fun of it… It was a difficult scene to pull off because of the timing with the ferry, which had to have its mouth open, so that we see a tiny bit of the characters who are leaving.

These long, deep staged shots are so exciting to watch, with things happening everywhere in sync, but they must be painstaking to shoot !

TVP : Yes, but it’s fun ! When the take happens as you want it to, it’s rewarding. There were a lot of difficult situations, but I don’t think we ever gave up and eventually we pulled it off, like this shot where the camera tracks back through the car : this is something Cristian wanted very bad. We didn’t have any special equipment to make it, so we just made it with a huge truss and a Ronin, and tracks. That’s it. The idea was to reveal the car as late as possible in the shot, from the perspective of the children who don’t know what’s going on. There’s always this kind of negotiation : when things are technically impossible, Cristian can understand, and in that case, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to pull it off with what we had at hand. I fought a lot to make it happen, with the support of the production.

What was your workflow ?

TVP : We only had one custom LUT focused on split tones to reinforce the cold-warm contrast, which I created based off tests and photos taken during location scouting : I like not to have multiple LUTs, because I feel I wouldn’t be true to myself otherwise – It’s like working with one film stock. I have Cristian’s trust regarding look and lighting, because I know what he likes (a balanced, clean look) or doesn’t (a warm wash !). He liked the LUT so much that we kept going back to it during the grading !

With my colourist, Andu Radu, we started with the HDR grade. We didn’t know we would have to make a HDR version until Neon acquired the film. Since I’m usually careful with highlights we didn’t have any issue, but after finishing in HDR, the SDR version didn’t hold up on the big screen. There was a lot of back and forth between HDR and SDR to keep the details in the highlights. I really want to have as much information as possible and there’s no overexposed area in the images, and it was hard to understand where to keep the highlights, so that the Dolby transcode would retain the information in SDR. We graded for 1,5 week, and then spent 3 or 4 days finetuning the DI after tests screenings. The Dolby plugin makes a mathematical interpretation of the footage, to translate it from a 1,000nit monitor to the 48nit projector, but it’s not perceptual, it looks different, so you need to finetune. The screening here was amazing, though. When we went to the test screening in the night it looked exactly like on the monitor, it was great ! I’m curious to see how the film will talk to people. It’s interesting that the Norwegian people who saw the film in Cannes like it. It’s not a film about Romania or Norway, it could happen in different contexts.

I would like to give a huge cheer to my entire crew, everyone who was there helping me, and all the colleagues who were part of the film. Thank you for your hard work, support, and dedication. I also want to thank Nicolai from the rental house Krypton Film.

(Interview condacted by Hélène de Roux for the AFC)