Cinematographer Review

We had viewed the film, Heima, which was originally aired in 2007. It is a documentary by the musical group Sigur Ros, who returned to Iceland in 2006 and did a series of free performances around the community after completing their world tour. Haima Cigarros was the Cinematographer for the documentary. The angles and directional focus of the imagery was very well put together. The cinematography was beautiful: the images had darker tones and a great deal of depth and detail to give the viewer a realistic perspective of Iceland. The artist depicts the drab, cold, and isolated (small) Norseland community, which reminded me a lot of my travels in Alaska, and the time that I spent living in Unalaska before the winter snow began to fall. Creative perspectives were merged together with images of Iceland’s landscapes and performance shots of the musical group. The film looked as though it was all done in high resolution. Shadows, dark colors, dim lighting are prominently shown, until snow and ice come up and just radiate light within an image. Very modern ideals were shown with merging and distorting imagery to relay an ideal and moving on to the main points of the artist’s perspectives and experiences. The performers perspectives were all shared throughout these shots. Thoughtfulness was obviously shown when capturing the emotional responses of the audience…and children’s faces during performances. The cinematographer did a very good job at attempting to capture the human spirit and convey emotional response that the performers created. Natural light was mainly used in the entire film. A lot of zooming in to capture a greater perspective of actions and surroundings was shown throughout the film, which gave the viewer a greater sense of detail, textures, light, etc. All-in-all, the film was very well put together, the music was beautiful, and I really favored the framed perspectives and uncommonly portrayed overlapping of foreground subjects against a main background image in the cinematography. It all allowed the viewer to decide for themselves as to what is more important in the subject matter being portrayed.

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