Munich HFF Film School students try out ALEXA 65

"Gör" is a unique and visually impressive short film created by director/co-author Anna Roller and cinematographer Felix Pflieger, both students at Munich's HFF Film School. Bavarian state minister of culture Monika Grütters already recognized "Gör" with a German Short Film Award in November 2021. Now, the nine-minute opus is celebrating its premiere at the Max Ophüls Film Festival. 

In the East Bavarian dialect, the word Gör is used to describe an ill-mannered child. Kitchen hand Mia, the central character in the short film, is still young enough to be scorned as a Gör by the people in her village, but she is also already mother to a school-aged boy. When he starts getting mobbed by his snooty classmates, Mia sees red and takes his revenge into her own hands. 

"Gör" was filmed in the Upper Palatinate region of Germany, with ARRI Rental Munich providing the ARRI ALEXA 65 camera, Prime DNA lenses, and lighting package. We spoke with Roller and Pflieger about the film shoot and the collaboration with ARRI Rental.

Why did you want to shoot your film with the ARRI ALEXA 65?

Anna Roller: We wanted to get right up close and personal with the lead role Mia, but at the same time we wanted to feel everything around her as well: the pressure in the restaurant kitchen where she works, the little jabs and gossip that go on behind her back. The ALEXA 65 format was perfect for that.

Felix Pflieger: I had wanted to experiment with underexposure of the ALEXA sensor for some time. We were able to get in contact with ARRI Rental and get the team excited about our film and our request to tell the story with the ALEXA 65's high-resolution sensor. A year later we were standing on the set of "Gör" with that camera system and Prime DNA lenses from ARRI Rental.

Were there films that had been shot with the ALEXA 65 that were a reference for you?

AR: The ALEXA 65 is used for more films than you would think. We were inspired by "If Beale Street Could Talk," for instance. We loved the portraits in that film and wanted to play around with actors looking right into the lens. We were also inspired by the movies of Alice Rohrwacher, Lynne Ramsay, Kelly Reichardt, Andrea Arnold, and "The Florida Project" by Sean Baker.

How did you use the ALEXA 65 exactly?

FP: The film gave us the opportunity to use the camera in a wide range of scenarios: for intimate close-ups and shoulder shots, with under and over-exposure, with Steadicam. Our operator Felix Lang even jumped onto a Segway with the camera during one shot, in order to keep the actor in frame while she was riding a bike.

What was it like to work with the large sensor?

FP: What really interested me about the big sensor were close-ups with long focal lengths, and big panoramic shots. The fine sensor structure is most visible for me in the nuances with slight underexposure. 

What format did you shoot in? 

FP: In Open Gate ARRIRAW 6.5K, which was fantastic for grading. Our colorist, Zé Maria Abreu Santos, prepared a show LUT for the shoot and was then able to take full advantage of all the benefits for the finishing. It didn't become clear to me just how much detail the camera captures, and what the viewer really gets to see, until we then linked from the proxies to the 6.5K original material.

How was the support you received from ARRI Rental? 

AR: Wolfgang Reichel at ARRI Rental Munich helped us make working with the camera and lenses as easy as possible. There was nothing left to be desired; we had everything we needed during prep.

We didn't need much support once we were actually filming "Gör," but on our current project we had a technical issue with the camera, and ARRI Rental got a replacement camera to us in a little mountain village in Italy within two days. That really was impressive and a big help in our situation.