HAUNTING BEAUTY

Capturing the mixture of macabre and melancholy in monochrome was a creative adventure DP Michał Dymek and director Magnus von Horn revelled in, always driven by story and the emotional path of characters.  

As first forays into shooting black-and-white features go, cinematographer Michał Dymek’s (EO, A Real Pain) lensing of The Girl with the Needle has proven a success, captivating audiences, winning the Camerimage Golden Frog for Best Feature, competing in the Main Competition at Cannes where it premiered and, at the time of writing, receiving a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture, Non-English Language, 

But rather than being motivated by awards, Dymek is always focused on storytelling. “It’s pleasant to receive the award of course and is the realisation of my student dream of getting a Golden Frog, but I’m most happy to have received the award from a group of people on the jury [which included Jola Dylewska PSC, Rodriego Prieto ASC AMC, Anthony Dod Mantle ASC BSC DFF and Łukasz Żal PSC] who I admire and who influenced me very much in my career and life as a DP,” says Dymek. 

“Festivals and awards are an additional attachment to our work, but we shouldn’t focus on this even though it is great when your work receives recognition. Whether shooting in black-and-white or colour, you need to be honest with yourself and not let your ego take control over what’s important for the story. It’s universal – whenever you remain true, you’ll deliver, otherwise you just disturb the story. Be brave and sometimes try to create ugly cinematography to help the story.”  

When Dymek began exploring The Girl with the Needle with Swedish/Polish writer/director Magnus von Horn, he was impressed by “one of the strongest scripts” he has read – it was “multi-layered and encompassed many elements in one simple story”, based on true events. 

“It was shocking, especially what happens in the second part of the film, but at the same time it was beautiful,” says the Polish cinematographer, who was influenced by how visually von Horn and co-writer Line Langebek Knudsen had written the script. “The main character, Karoline – who’s fighting for a better tomorrow for herself during very hard times where everything was against women – was also captivating. I found an element of myself in her inner motivation – she didn’t give up.” 

Early in that first conversation, Dymek and von Horn simultaneously decided shooting in black-and-white would best suit the tale of the young factory worker and her struggle for survival in post-WWI Copenhagen. Having worked together before, the cinematographer knew von Horn likes to be honest with the emotional path of characters. “So we didn’t want to be super strict in terms of visuals or show off our visual ideas, but instead make sure we served the story. We felt this world needed to be very physical and influence the person watching it in a physical way,” says Dymek. 

From the first pages, he knew the look should be “very wet, dirty, and raw”. While von Horn also wanted it to feel “a little like a fairy tale, but scary”, Dymek saw it as a “very real story that was so brutal and would demand everything – production design, location, lighting, and framing – to be loaded with emotion of being oppressed. 

Dymek always seeks inspiration from the text, his imagination, and what shaped him into the filmmaker he is today. Outside of this, visual references explored with von Horn spanned Oliver Twist, Schindler’s List, Night of the Hunter, and Polish film Nikt nie wola directed by Kazimierz Kutz.  

They looked at many black-and-white photographs including one book of photos from Sergio Larraín called Vagabond Photographer, black-and-white archives of Copenhagen from the time the film is set – 1919 – and watched as much footage as possible available on the internet and in libraries from around that time.  

“But the main inspiration was conversations about what the sense of the scene was. It was a very abstract process I really enjoyed and was how I imagined filmmaking to be. I think the most crucial part of the visual result on screen was found inside ourselves,” says Dymek. “We invested a crazy amount of time but we didn’t care about that because it was a pleasure to talk about film and carry out tests and brainstorms.” 

Despite dreaming of a 40-day shoot to allow more coverage per scene, the team had fewer than 30 days to capture the ambitious production. “The budget was reasonable for an arthouse Polish-Danish-Swedish co-production, but I believe any restriction is also interesting in terms of creativity because it forces you to do something imaginative to make the day,” says Dymek. 

The pair did however enjoy the luxury of a lengthy prep period of two and a half years, beginning with soft prep before a more intense two and a half months before principal photography began. Despite being set in Copenhagen, Denmark, the film was mainly shot in Poland and only two days shooting in Sweden. With a core fundamental vision of what Copenhagen looked like, Dymek and von Horn either scouted together or with location scout, David Kolosowski, searching for locations that would help produce images that were “physically visual and visceral”. 

“Knowing Denmark now looks extremely clean and well renovated, we knew we would need millions to make it look how we wanted,” says Dymek. “We knew Poland offered some unusual places that would be perfect so we continued scouting there with production designer Jagna Dobesz which was crucial creatively as we were trying to pre visualise the whole film where possible, block ideas, try different angles and lenses.”  

Using their phones and Sony Alpha stills camera initially, they found many solutions to tell the story of each scene, examining the values of each location, beginning with exteriors before moving on to interiors. “Most of the small interiors were built on stage, and all big interiors like the factory interior or Karoline’s love interest Jørgen’s mother’s house we found,” says Dymek. “It was my first serious experience of building on stage, and because of the black-and-white, we also needed to think about specific colours and tones. Although it was a monochromatic picture, we played a lot with colours to capture proper contrast and find the ideal shade of dark tone as a backdrop for our actors’ faces when we were shooting inside.” 

The factory at which Karoline works was shot in a building featuring two long walls with many windows. As they were shooting in November in Poland, the days lasted around seven to eight hours, meaning they needed to light the gigantic space using five cherry pickers and two 9K HMIs on each of them. 

The interior of the apartment of Dagmar – an older woman who operates a clandestine adoption agency under the guise of a candy shop and gives Karoline a position as a wet nurse to help support herself – and the interior of the shop was built on stage. With no space on stage to shoot Karoline’s new apartment which she moves into after being thrown out, the team had to think outside the box for alternatives. Dymek suggested using a space at the Łódź Film School in Poland – once the old atelier where he and von Horn took their first filmmaking steps which now houses an existing attic set that perfectly suited the needs of the scene. Jagna Dobesz transformed it into “a grim, lived-in space, capturing the extreme squalor and poor conditions” demanded by scenes set in this location. 

“Mariusz Wlodarski, our Polish producer, said, ‘I like it. This is the filmmaking way of thinking.’ It was about solving the problem of lack of space by adapting existing decoration in an old atelier. Whenever we shot on the stage, we tried to have all walls floating and when we wanted to unscrew the wall and float it away it took time,” says Dymek. “Every location was demanding and it wasn’t an easy film, but everyone was so dedicated and determined to make it work.” 

Less is more 

Although shooting on film was briefly explored, due to variables and uncertainty about budget early on, the filmmakers opted for digital capture. Dymek believes when shooting black-and-white digitally, working with a talented colourist (Emil Ericson) and being aware of what is possible during post is necessary. 

Wanting to shoot with a large sensor camera, the cinematographer chose the ARRI Mini LF with a combination of Leica Hugo lenses, which Dymek had used to shoot A Real Pain when the lenses were in their original form as model called M.08. “I decided to choose large format because we were inspired by a lot of still photography and wanted to keep a similar aspect ratio and play with very selective, shallow depth of field to make the image more eerie, more reminiscent of that period.  

“We decided to shoot with a colour sensor because we wanted to play with monochrome adjustment to affect the colour curves and influence image contrast. We played a lot with the red and blue channel mainly, also green, changing the tonality of the picture.” 

Lens choice was motivated by not wanting an “extremely sharp and perfect” image, but still having an element of modernity. No filtration was used other than an occasional polariser as Dymek “was aware of adjustments that could be made in post to produce the desired results”. 

As well as testing colours, textures of walls, and costumes with the Hugos, Dymek did test shots using InnoVision’s specialist tubular lens, the Probe II Plus which allowed him to capture an extreme close-up shot of an eye. He also worked with 36-435mm Angénieux FF T 4.2 zoom for a scene in court combining a long dolly with zoom. Elsewhere, Zeiss Macro 50mm lenses were used to shoot a miniature set of the night city roofscape. 

“Instead of using typical CGI techniques, we combined an analogue approach of working with miniature sets with CGI; scanning everything afterwards in the computer,” explains Dymek. “So there’s one scene where we fly over the nighttime city roof line which we did in real life. Everything was built in miniature, and then the far ends of the houses were multiplied in post-production.” 

Inspired by still photography, the filmmakers decided to shoot open gate – similar to 3:2 aspect ratio 35mm still photography – and to shoot RAW at 24 frames per second to deliver as much information as possible. LUTs were created early on with colourist Emil Eriksson from Can Film in Goeteborg, Sweden with an aim “to set a various levels of contrast” as they knew they would primarily need a LUT which allowed them to see a black-and-white version of the image. 

Dymek decided to create four LUTs: one just desaturated to use as a comparison; and another three with progressive contrast created by Eriksson using monochrome adjustment in Da Vinci Resolve. “Our favourite reference films often had really high contrast, so we decided to have on standby the option of going higher with contrast in three steps,” he adds. “We made adjustments to the colour curves and thanks to Emil’s skills we produced a beautiful image with nice texture, adding grain and sometimes a little diffusion and aberration to make it more real, organic, and closer to film but still with a modern element.” 

Dymek always likes to operate but brings in a Steadicam operator when needed. On this production he felt lucky to work with “some of the best Polish Steadicam operators”, Adam Mendry and Maciej Tomków. “Although the film is largely static or shot on dolly, the select Steadicam shots we had were executed perfectly. I don’t like it when Steadicam feels like it’s floating which they avoided,” says Dymek.  

“Adam had to capture a difficult shot of Karoline crossing the busy street as there were many pedestrians passing by and Maciej filmed a detailed long sequence following Karoline which he used gyro stabilisers that attach under the Steadicam to capture, making it almost like a dolly or Technocrane.” 

Camera movement was driven by the emotional path of the character. For example, to convey Karoline’s frustration when she is asked to leave her apartment the sequence was captured in one handheld long shot – “beautifully cut” afterwards by editor Agnieszka Glinska. “It wasn’t completely blocked – we just penciled in the direction of the scenes and let it flow and allowed the actors freedom with the camera being their observer,” says Dymek. “And whenever a brutal reality hit her, we decided to just be static because the camera is just looking at her being helpless, confused, and lost. Whenever she wants to run, we ran with her. And even though the film is largely static, I opted for a dolly when possible because I love using it to move around and look for camera positions quicker.” 

Sometimes the static nature of the film was dictated by limitations faced due to the location and what it was possible to show in shot. “If we move the camera, are we going to reveal the shopping mall around the corner?” says Dymek. “We also needed to be mindful not to show new window frames, so our production designer always put covers on them.” 

Shooting some scenes with babies also presented obstacles as they were only able to be on set for a short amount of time. “Brilliant” 1^st AD Greta Varts was integral in organising this logistically. “It was almost like a separate chunk of the shoot and we’d even shoot coverage of a few scenes with babies at once,” says Dymek. “It was just about shooting without cutting. We also filmed with a toddler and although that can be known to be challenging, whenever the toddler was put it in front of the camera magic happened because it’s just a pure type of humankind where you don’t have to do anything; it’s already cinema – a pure truth.” 

While the production contains elements of horror and thriller, the filmmakers did not want to be too direct in their storytelling approach, adopting the ‘less is more’ approach. Sometimes not showing something in the frame was much more powerful. “On occasions we also chose to hide things in the shadow, and to not always show evil emotions because it would be too direct,” says Dymek. “We used silhouettes and did not always show faces, so when someone steps into the light it creates a more subtle effect and enhances the power of the actors’ performances while enriching the storytelling.” 

The filmmakers turned to practical shooting methods to capture a drug hallucination sequence, inspired by photography Dymek showed von Horn of faces captured in multiple exposures and then projected onto a face. “When I did tests I fell in love with the technique – it was super simple and effective but not overused in modern cinema,” says the cinematographer.  

“It matched the style of the film, – very basic, visual, and not VFX style. Magnus and his editor Agnieszka Glinska extended the idea by capturing every main cast member’s face and then a film projector was used to project the clips on their faces while shooting at a fast frame rate to create a motion blur effect. It needed to be shot in very dark conditions, always adding a black backdrop behind, even sometimes creating a blackout tent.” 

Lighting with emotion 

Shooting his first feature in black-and-white was a process of discovery during which Dymek learnt hard light is more successful than soft light in monochrome. He wanted the lighting to be as “natural as possible” which meant often working with big, soft surfaces combined with “pointy, hard” light sources. 

He felt “well supported by brilliant gaffer”, Przemyslaw Sosnowski, who Dymek has worked with before and is very experienced in shooting in black-and-white, having worked on films such as Łukasz Żal PSC’s monochrome production Cold War (2018), “Sometimes we used only hard light, but it was generally about mixing soft and hard light,” says Dymek. “I think the presence of hard light is very important in black-and-white photography otherwise the picture is too dull, flat, and without emotion.” 

They mixed tungsten, LED and HMI, working with LED as much as possible when budget allowed. Fixtures included many tungsten Dinos 5K, 10K Fresnels, and LED lamps such as ARRI SkyPanel S-360s, and Aputure 600W and 1200W and little Aputure MC Pro panels to act as firelight as well, as working a lot of with candles, naphtha lamps, and real fire. “I was aware mixed colour temperature affects the contrast of the picture in black-and white, but it wasn’t too bad as we dimmed the tungsten. On stage we built big soft rigs to act as the skyline and outside we usually cut out light using negative fill.” 

Within the camera and lighting “family” created through the production, Dymek also praises 1^st AC Pawel Zelasko, 2^nd AC Wojciech Zubek, video assist Doriana Agacinska, DIT Maksim Najdienow who looked after LUTs and ensured consistent exposure from scene to scene, key grip Szymon Polak, and his best boy Marcin Skoś “Thanks to them, I could breathe and sleep because as a camera operator, I was very immersed in the process,” he says. 

Telling the powerful story of The Girl with the Needle reconfirmed that “whatever you put into the project during the prep, will help on set”. Sometimes filmmaking does not allow for much free time to explore ideas but Dymek and von Horn felt privileged to enjoy such a lengthy prep period. “Having already formed a friendship was helpful too as we managed to do and discuss so much before the shoot. Without this at the core of what we built, we would have been lost during the shoot.”