Known for his long-time collaboration with Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu, cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru shared his experience making “Graduation,” “R.M.N.,” “Fjord” and Iraqi director Hasan Hadi’s “The President’s Cake” during his masterclass at Jakarta World Cinema. Benh Zeitlin, the Oscar-nominated director of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” said he was moderating the session because “we hope to work together someday.” He praised Panduru as the kind of cinematographer who could “bring a dimension to your work that is beyond your personal imagination.” The masterclass traced Panduru’s career chronologically, starting with the screening of one indoor and one outdoor scene from “Graduation.” Panduru trained under Oleg Mutu, Mungiu’s longtime cinematographer on films including “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and was introduced to the Romanian director while still a trainee. Panduru said the camera in Mungiu’s films is meant to stay low-profile and avoid steering the audience toward certain things, because viewers are “smart enough to understand what’s going on there.” “With Cristian Mungiu’s work, he usually shoots plan-séquence, one scene per shot.
There is no editing, no cuts. From a cinematographer’s point of view, things can be quite difficult because we end up shooting a lot of takes, and the performance comes as somehow the most important thing on set,” said Panduru. Panduru also pointed out that the responsibility to stay fresh lies with each individual, since shooting is about living the moment with everyone on set.
When you get to work in this kind of style, everybody gives a bit of himself into that process, so there’s a moment of synchronicity,” he said. On his choice of projects, Panduru said artists should collaborate based on shared values, and that he has been lucky enough to choose the subjects that drew him. He ruled out making an action film, “or maybe only if it’s something that has a social drama behind.
Everything relates to affinities.” During the masterclass, several of Panduru’s defining scenes were screened, each followed by a technical breakdown of how it was shot: the 20-minute take of more than 100 people gathered in the town hall in “R.M.N.,” the long shot alongside a sailing boat on the water in “The President’s Cake,” and two scenes from Mungiu’s latest film, “Fjord.” The use of light in “R.M.N.” led the discussion, with Panduru revealing that the daytime scene was in fact shot at night. Zeitlin said that when he saw the clip from “The President’s Cake,” he realized the same person had shot the Mungiu film. Panduru said the film was a children’s fairytale that naturally called for a different visual language.
The natural landscape inspired him to build scenes more creatively, freeing him to use running jib arms and wheels, techniques he went on to use again on “Fjord.” The first clip from “Fjord,” a family gathering that appeared to be shot at “magic hour,” the brief window just before sunset, turned the discussion back to light. Panduru explained how he blocked the natural light from outside to buy more time for the performances. The masterclass ended with another long take from “Fjord,” in which the camera follows star Renate Reinsve from searching on the ground to jumping into the sea.
The cinematographer, who jumped into the freezing sea alongside Reinsve, said he thought that would be the most straightforward way of shooting it, but that the hardest part was synchronizing with the actor mid-jump.
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