{"id":2727,"date":"2019-04-03T14:22:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T14:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2727"},"modified":"2019-05-02T13:45:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T13:45:40","slug":"frame-guides-meadowland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/frame-guides-meadowland\/","title":{"rendered":"Frame Guides: Meadowland"},"content":{"rendered":"

When an artist pivots toward a new practice, they inevitably bring with them two things: their reputation and their experience. In the case of <\/span>Meadowland<\/i><\/b>, the feature debut of director Reed Morano, ASC, the filmmaker\u2019s noted reputation arrives intact, and her signature point of view \u2014 honed with the cinematography of films like 2013\u2019s <\/span>Kill Your Darlings<\/i><\/b> and 2008\u2019s <\/span>Frozen River<\/i><\/b> \u2014 is not only present, it achieves a kind of apotheosis. (<\/span>Ed. Note<\/span>: <\/span>Meadowland<\/span><\/i> used <\/span>Endcrawl<\/b><\/a>, which publishes this site.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Meadowland<\/span><\/i> is a drama about the different ways that two New York City parents cope with the sudden disappearance of their young son. A year later, the boy is still missing and the father, a policeman named Phil (played by Luke Wilson), longs for closure while the mother, a schoolteacher named Sarah (played by Olivia Wilde), clings to a thread of hope that their child is still alive. They’re in the same boat, rocking on a sea of depression, and rowing in different directions \u2014 he to shore, and she into deeper, deadlier waters.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Morano\u2019s vibrant, kinetic photography \u2014 with its frequently shallow focus and handheld camera\u00a0\u2014 is like the filmic equivalent of a gesture drawing. There’s something unreal and distinctively graphic about its representation, but there’s a truth in its shape, the details, the colors, the quality of the light.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meadowland<\/span><\/i>\u00a0functions not merely in cinematic and narrative terms\u00a0\u2014 it’s also an object of pure creative expression. The only lens through which we are told this story is Morano\u2019s, and through it we observe the hazy impressions of ghosts, of memories, of people. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish one from the other. Sarah and Phil, Phil\u2019s addict brother (Giovanni Ribisi), his friend in the support group (John Leguizamo), the hustler at the gas station (Elisabeth Moss), the student with Asperger\u2019s, the girl in Sarah\u2019s class who cuts herself: each character occupies a shallow, liminal space\u00a0\u2014 call it a personal hell \u2014 that’s both in and out of focus, between light and shadow, day and night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m not a dark person by nature,\u201d says Morano in <\/span>a 2015 interview (conducted by this writer) for\u00a0<\/span>American Cinematographer<\/i><\/b><\/a>, \u201cbut I always thought that if I directed a movie, I wanted to make something that would punch people in the gut.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThis story begged for a naturalistic approach, so the look didn\u2019t require a ton of obsessing.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I wanted to be wide open for aesthetic reasons. In some scenes, like the ones showing Sarah out in public, I wanted the world to feel like a foreign place, and I used the shallow depth of field to isolate her from everyone else.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe only way this film could work is if viewers believe this is real, that they’re totally with these characters.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m looking for the moments that explain everything someone is feeling, with absolutely no dialogue.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I took more risks. I didn\u2019t overthink things… And if I wanted no fill light, no one on set was going to disagree.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI didn\u2019t want the colors to be too punchy or to feel too digital, so I restricted the color space in the dailies, then [Company 3] colorist Andrew Geary and I brought it back in the DI.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI care about the emotion first and the shot second,” Moreno concludes. “On Meadowland<\/em> I committed more to the story and the actors than the cinematography, and I feel this is my best work as a cinematographer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A visual analysis of Reed Morano, ASC’s directorial debut. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[134,127,135,133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2837,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions\/2837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}